Surprise choice for new Polish prime minister

Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, a former school principal turned economic adviser, is set to become Poland’s new prime minister as he embarks on talks to form a new government that will try to reduce taxes and increase prosperity for the country’s 38 million residents.

In a surprise decision, the 45-year-old former physicist was asked to be the next prime minister by the conservative Law and Justice Party last night. Most analysts, and Poles, were certain that party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who said he wanted the job, would get it.

Instead, Kaczynski surprised even his coalition partners.

“Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz is well-prepared to deal with economic issues, which were a source of dispute between us and Civic Platform. This dispute must be settled,” he said of his party’s chief rival and likely coalition partner.

Analysts said the move was aimed at speeding up the welfare-oriented party’s talks with market-oriented Civic Platform.

Donald Tusk, who leads Civic Platform, was surprised by the choice, but was eager to begin talks.

“It’s astonishing,” he said. “But it’s the winning party which makes the decisions.”

However, he also added that Marcinkiewicz may have been chosen as a figurehead leader, with the real power staying with Kaczynski.

“It would be a very serious mistake if the new government started working in a situation where real decisions are made in the back seat,” Tusk said.

Marcinkiewicz denied any such claim, telling TVN24 that as prime minister, he would serve in the role.

He said talks on forming the new government would begin immediately, but predicted they would be tough.

“We will create a good government for Poland,” he told TVN24. “We will find a common road.”

Marcinkiewicz’s selection also signalled that Law and Justice was throwing its full weight behind the presidential candidacy of Lech Kaczynski, the conservative Warsaw mayor and the identical twin brother of Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

Kaczynski said one reason why he proposed Marcinkiewicz was in part to avoid confusion should his brother, Lech, win the October 9 presidential race. He said he wanted to spare Poland two lookalike leaders in the nation’s two top jobs.

Regardless of who the prime minister will be, official results showed Law and Justice with a narrow advantage over Civic Platform, the State Electoral Commission said.

Law and Justice took 26.99% of the vote with 155 seats while Civic Platform had 24.14% with 133 seats.

Together the parties will have 288 seats in the 460-member lower house, 19 seats short of a majority needed to change the constitution, which both parties advocated.

The final figures confirmed the battering suffered by the governing Democratic Left Alliance, which was undermined by corruption scandals and persistently high unemployment. It slumped to 11.31% with 55 seats, radically down from the 41% it won four years ago.

The two centre-right parties have extensive common ground, including calls for tax cuts.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski pledged, however, that his party would hold out against the centrepiece of Civic Platform’s program – a 15% flat-rate tax for individuals and businesses.

Law and Justice favours retaining higher tax rates for the wealthy and offering tax breaks for large families.

Three other parties also will be represented in the new parliament.

The anti-European Union Self Defence party came in third, with 11.41% of the vote. The nationalist and strongly Roman Catholic League of Polish Families was fifth with 7.97%, followed by the left-wing Polish Peasant Party, with 6.96%.

Outgoing President Aleksander Kwasniewski, who is in charge of convening the new parliament, said its first session should be held between October 17 and October 24.