Polish parliament votes for dissolution

Poland’s parliament voted to dissolve itself today, triggering an early election which the government has sought in a bid to end long-running political turbulence.

The 460-seat lower house voted 377-54 in favour of dissolution, giving the move the two-thirds majority it needed.

The constitution requires that an election be held by October 21, which is also Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s preferred date for the election.

President Lech Kaczynski, the Prime Minister’s twin brother, must now set the date of the election. It was not immediately clear when he would do so.

Polls suggest a close race between the two front-runners – the Prime Minister’s nationalist, conservative Law and Justice party, and Civic Platform, another centre-right party with a more pro-business stance.

“I believe that this evening brings people a sense of relief,” Donald Tusk, the leader of Civic Platform, told TVN24 television after the vote. “The new parliament will... produce a better government.”

Today’s vote ended parliament’s term two years ahead of schedule.

Poland, the biggest of the EU’s new eastern members and a US ally, has experienced near-continuous political instability since Law and Justice narrowly won a 2005 election, promising to wipe out corruption which had flourished since the fall of communism in 1989.

Since then, it has governed either as a minority administration or in a coalition with two small populist and Euro-sceptic parties – the right-wing League of Polish Families and the agrarian-based Self-Defence.

That coalition collapsed last month, largely due to corruption allegations against the leader of one of the junior partners, Self-Defence leader Andrzej Lepper, who was the agriculture minister and a deputy prime minister.

Since then, Jaroslaw Kaczynski has pursued snap elections in a bid to strengthen his party’s hold on parliament and escape the current paralysis.