Andrzej Duda, Poland‘s President, is starting talks to form a new government after an opposition grouping won more votes than Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party in elections on Sunday, according to Euractiv.
Donald Tusk’s Civic Coalition (PO), the centrist Third Way and the Left are ready to form a new government. The PiS presidential candidate faces a difficult choice: he either entrusts incumbent Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki with forming a new cabinet or appoints Tusk as prime minister. However, Duda has found a compromise. The president’s advisor on social affairs, Marcin Mastalerek, told private Radio ZET radioz:
Next week, the president will invite all committees one by one for consultations on the first step (of appointing the new government).
Poland’s constitution states that the head of state must appoint the prime minister as well as other members of the Council of Ministers within 14 days of the first meeting of the lower house of parliament, the Sejm, which is due in mid-November.
However, the president could disregard the election results even if one of the opposition parties had scored the highest number of points in the election. Duda could appoint Morawiecki from PiS, whose government would still be legitimately in power despite the de facto victory of the opposition.
However, some opposition representatives criticised Duda’s decision. They believe that the president should have appointed Tusk as prime minister immediately after the election because the three opposition parties won more votes in total than the ruling PiS party. Tusk served as prime minister from 2007 to 2014 before being appointed president of the European Council, a position he held until 2019.
On the day the election results were officially announced, Duda appointed 72 new judges. Most of them had close ties to Zbigniew Zobro, the anti-EU justice minister and leader of the Sovereign Poland party, which split from PiS but remained its coalition partner until the end of the previous government. The president was also criticised for this.
Political analysts say that these actions by Duda will ensure PiS its continued influence over the judiciary even if it loses power. During its eight years in power, PiS implemented several controversial judicial reforms that, according to the EU Court of Justice, undermined the rule of law in the country.
Tusk previously promised that he would reverse these reforms, restore the independence of Poland’s judiciary and mend relations with the European Commission if he returned to power.
