WARSAW: Donald Tusk will be the first Polish prime minister since the fall of communism more than two decades ago to rule for a second consecutive term after his centre-right Civic Platform trounced rivals in an election, cheering the markets.
With 64 per cent of the votes counted, Tusk’s pro-business party had won 37.5 per cent of votes in on Sunday’s election, short of an absolute majority but far ahead of Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s nationalist-conservative Law and Justice party on 30.6 percent.
Financial markets will welcome Tusk’s victory, which points to four more years of relative political and economic stability in the European Union’s largest eastern member state at a time of deepening crisis in the euro zone.
The Polish zloty edged up 0.1 percent in early on Monday trade, while other regional currencies shed as much as 0.9 per cent. Soon after exit polls indicated a decisive win when the polls closed on Sunday night, Tusk swiftly claimed victory and Kaczynski conceded defeat. Although the partial results showed PO with a smaller share than the exit polls, the party and its preferred coalition partner, the Peasants’ Party (PSL), would still together have enough seats to win a small majority in the Sejm lower house.
”From the point of view of the markets, this is very good news. Investors worried that we could see a coalition made up of three parties,” said Ernest Pytlarczyk, chief economist at BRE Bank.
The leader of the rural-based PSL, Waldemar Pawlak, signalled he was ready to forge a new coalition with Tusk.
”The ruling party and coalition for the first time in Poland’s post-communist history has been re-elected and that shows the consolidation of democracy in Poland,” said Jacek Raciborski, a political scientist at Warsaw University. About one in two eligible voters took part in the election, in which a return to power by Kaczynski would have threatened relations with Germany and Russia and worried investors.
The PAP state news agency quoted a senior PO politician as saying Tusk and Pawlak might yet fall short of a majority and Civic Platform might also try to lure members of the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) into a new coalition.
The SLD, heir to the once-mighty Communist Party, took a surprisingly poor 8.2 percent, according to the exit poll, while Pawlak’s PSL secured 9.5 per cent. (UNI)