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agentmancuso
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Good news from PolandFrom the BBC yesterday:
| Quote: | Massive win for Polish opposition
Poland's liberal opposition Civic Platform party has won a massive poll victory, ousting Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski's conservatives.
With 99% of votes counted, Donald Tusk's pro-EU party received more than 41% of the votes, while Mr Kaczynski's Law and Justice (PiS) got about 32%.
The election was called two years early after Mr Kaczynski's coalition collapsed over a corruption probe.
Mr Tusk is expected to hold talks with likely coalition partners this week.
An alliance with the centrist Polish Peasants' Party would give the Civic Platform a clear majority.
Civic Platform's total translates to 209 seats in the 460-seat lower house of parliament, the Sejm, with the Peasants Party on course to get 31 seats.
Mr Kaczynski has admitted defeat and congratulated his rival
Turnout was the highest recorded in Poland since communism fell in 1989.
Business friendly
Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski admits defeat in Poland's general election
Mr Kaczynski said his party would be a "decisive, tough opposition"
The prime minister's twin brother, Lech Kaczynski, is Poland's president and does not face an election until 2010. But the opposition's win looks big enough for it to be able to override his veto power.
PiS has pursued former communists and adopted a sceptical approach to the European Union, while Civic Platform has promised lower taxes and a more business-friendly administration with closer ties to Europe.
Civic Platform says it will repair Poland's strained ties with Germany and other EU neighbours. It also wants strong ties with the US but Mr Tusk has vowed to withdraw 900 Polish troops from the US-led coalition force in Iraq.
EU leaders hailed the result. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said he expected "fruitful co-operation" with the new government. |
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Aventinian
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I'm afraid I have literally zero knowledge of Polish politics. In my experience, Liberal and Conservative are near meaningless these days, so judging the relevant parties based on only that would be rather silly - and moreover, I'm too lazy to do any actual research into the matter.
However I would like to share my amusement at the name of the Polish Peasants' Party.
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agentmancuso
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I had some contact with a bloke who worked for Civic Platform a while back, which made me look into it a bit. They seem to be a straightforwardly 'liberal' party in the old sense, i.e. anti-bureaucratic and internationalist. The outgoing government are 'conservative' in the morally-authoritarian and nationalist sense: a stance which naturally appeals to both ex-Communists and ultramontane Catholics. The labels themselves are shifting daemons, but the news is good all the same.
And yes, there is something pythonesque about actually calling yourself the peasants' party (as distinct from quietly just being the Voice of the Rednecks)
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macnumpty
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I'm just glad to see the successor Party to the Polish Homophobe Party - sorry, League of Polish Families - wiped out.
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