Poland: The left’s last best hope

To no one’s surprise, a man who had vowed to leave politics this year throws his hat into the Polish presidential ring, writes Wojciech Kosc in Transitions Online.

Civic duty or calculated political maneuver: however you read it, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz’s decision to run for president has turned the race upside down.

What had looked like a race between the right’s torchbearer Lech Kaczynski and a mixed bag of lesser lights to move into the chair of President Aleksander Kwasniewski when he leaves office in October now has become a much more clear-cut battle between Law and Justice Party co-leader Kaczynski and the man much of the left had wanted to run.

Parliamentary Speaker Cimoszewicz, 54, a former prime minister and foreign minister in social-democrat governments, made his decision public on 28 June, reversing his repeated statements that he would retire from politics this autumn at the end of the current parliament, or Sejm.

A recent opinion survey (taken prior to Cimoszewicz’s announcement) showed Cimoszewicz at 22 percent support, a 3-point edge over Kaczynski. Senator, founder of the new Center Party, and cardiac surgeon Zbigniew Religa was close behind with 16 percent, one point ahead of the liberal Civic Platform’s hopeful Donald Tusk. Populist Andrzej Lepper came in at 10 percent, while another leftist candidate, Marek Borowski, was at 8 percent.

The contenders will face off on 9 October, followed by a runoff on 23 October if no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote.

To read the article in full, visit the Transitions Online website.