On Monday, Poland’s president will swear in members of a government that is likely to last only until December, Reuters reports.
Opposition parties have called the event a “farce” designed to delay their rise to power after winning a majority in October elections.
The nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, in power since 2015, came first in the election but fell short of the 231 seats needed for a majority and appears unlikely to win a vote of confidence in parliament.
A broad alliance of pro-European Union parties won 248 seats and said it was ready to form a government, but nevertheless President Andrzej Duda, a PiS ally, gave Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki the first attempt to do so.
Leading PiS representatives Mariusz Blaszczak and Jacek Sasin have said they will not be part of the new government, prompting opposition politicians and commentators to say that the party’s bigwigs are reluctant to join an administration that is doomed to fail.
However, PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski said in an interview published on Monday that the suggestion that the party’s heavyweights did not want to participate was an “outright lie” and that forming a government of experts, not politicians, was his idea. He said:
The point is that there should not be too many politicians in this government. We want to show that it is possible to govern differently.
The Prime Minister has promised to implement the political proposals of the opposition parties to persuade them to co-operate with him. Opposition parties accuse the government of delaying tactics aimed at covering up offences committed during their tenure. Marcin Kierwinski, a lawmaker from the liberal Civic Coalition (KO) grouping told private broadcaster Radio Zet:
We all know that this is one big comedy and farce. It is a fight for time.
