Beata Szydlo and Jaroslaw Kaczynski savored the taste of victory after PiS’s emphatic return to power. Final results will be announced later Monday. “We must always remember that we are serving”.
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The departure a year ago of party leader Donald Tusk to the post of EU Council president set the centrists adrift. Among his proposals is a lower flat tax of 16 percent on personal income, corporations and as a sales tax.
It would also be the first time that the socialist grouping that grew out of the pre-1989 communist party failed to win seats.
“This is the first time in the history of Polish democracy that a single party has scored a(n) (outright) majority” in the Sejm, the lower house of parliament, he said. Exit polls will be available immediately after voting ends.
Poland has seen its economy, the largest in ex-communist central Europe, expand by almost 50 percent in the last decade, with the pro-market Civic Platform focusing on trying to make the most of European Union aid and combining green field investment with fiscal prudence.
Two left-wing forces had been in the running: United Left, a coalition of several parties, and a new party, Together.
Conservative Law and Justice leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski kisses the hand of Justice candidate for the Prime Minister Beata Szydlo (left) at the party’s headquarters in Warsaw, Poland, Sunday. “We must keep his memory alive”, Kaczynski said, also recalling 95 others who died in the crash.
“We are the same as our countrymen, we have not detached ourselves from reality”, she said. Now, holding a majority in parliament, the party will have no excuse not to fulfil its promises and stand up to the huge expectations it has raised in society.
Turnout was estimated at 51.6% of 30,534,948 eligible voters.
Poland’s election results are “a big disappointment” to those who seek tolerance in the country, a Polish-born American Jewish historian said Monday, a day after the conservative Law and Justice party won a crushing election victory.
Russian Federation responded cautiously to the Polish election result, noting that bilateral relations are not in very good shape.
WARSAW-A nationalist opposition party appeared to have won Poland’s parliamentary election on Sunday, riding a wave of discontent among voters who said they hadn’t benefited from a healthy economy and saw the ruling party as out of touch.
When Law and Justice ran the government from 2005-2007 it liked to nurture historical grievances against Germany, which inflicted massive suffering on Poland during World War II.
Rather, the point is that the Tory push to recast our alliances across Europe – whether we remain in the European Union or leave it – is working, bit by bit. They wanted to break with the antagonism between the two big parties – Law and Justice and Civic Platform. While Poland’s currency, stocks and bonds have underperformed emerging-market peers amid investor concern that the opposition will erode profitability of banks or overextend government spending, analysts at banks including UniCredit and PKO Bank Polski expect markets to rebound following the vote.
The Ipsos exit poll showed the anti-establishment movement of rock musician Pawel Kukiz in third with nine per cent support and 44 seats.
Yet Civic Platform is also responsible for years of delays in the completion of highways. Economists predict that this programme will lead to stronger economic growth (up to 5 percent in 2017) but then lead to a deep crisis of state finances.
Interpreter Slawomir Krantz, 49, voted for Civic Platform, which he described as a “lesser evil”, because he fears other parties might spoil the stability Poland has achieved. He says nobody was hurt and officials were able to secure all the documentation.
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It also wants to enshrine more Catholic values in law, reflecting the party’s socially conservative stance.
