Posted on 09/23/2005 10:54:02 AM PDT by lizol
President warns of 'dangerous' slide to right ahead of weekend election
Monika Scislowska Canadian Press
September 23, 2005
WARSAW, Poland (AP) - President Aleksander Kwasniewski warned Friday of a dangerous lurch to the right in Poland's elections and urged voters to defy predictions of a low turnout by turning out in large numbers.
Opinion polls suggest the left-wing government, mired in corruption scandals, will be swept from power in Sunday's vote by the center-right Law and Justice Party and the pro-business Civic Platform.
With the two opposition parties, who plan to rule in coalition, on course for a two-thirds majority - enough to amend the constitution - Kwasniewski said it was important that other parties also receive support.
Kwasniewski, a former communist, said a landslide "would mean the triumph of one side, and every triumph is dangerous because it carries the seed of arrogance, pride and mistakes."
"I trust the voters will soften that victory," Kwasniewski, who is also a former member of the ruling Democratic Left Alliance, said on state radio. Kwasniewski also endorsed the Alliance in a newspaper ad Friday.
Two polls released Friday showed the Platform in the lead with a 32 per cent support, and Law and Justice treading on its heels with 30 per cent, in surveys conducted by both the PBS and OBOP polling agencies.
The radical farmer Self-Defense earned 12 per cent, according to the PBS polling agency and 10 per cent according to the OBOP polling agency.
In both polls, the Alliance would make it to parliament with 8 per cent according to the OBOP and 7 per cent in the PBS poll.
PBS surveyed 1,304 voters and OBOP 1,000 voters by telephone on Thursday. Margins of error were plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Pollsters have forecast a turnout of about 40 per cent, similar to that in other elections held after the 1989 fall of communism. More than 30 million eligible voters are registered.
"Let us go the voting stations," Kwasniewski said on the last day of stumping for the 460-seat lower house. No campaigning is allowed on Saturday.
Kwasniewski, who decides when the new parliament will meet to approve the government, said the first session must take place before Oct. 24.
That is a day after a possible presidential runoff in which Platform leader Donald Tusk and Law and Justice leader Lech Kaczynski are the front-runners.
Help? Left always means Left, but sometimes Right means Left too.
I have no idea what a dangerous slide to the right would mean in Poland.
Dangerous to the left. Good news for the country?
Not only that, but get a load of the author's name:
Monika Scislowska Canadian Press
Talk about irony. . .
Cheers!
Exactly - as always, as everywhere :-)
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