Poland
Poland's budget will force a new coalition of enemies
Warsaw, Poland September 18, 2006. Poland's budget must be approved within a given time frame or, under the rules of the Polish Constitution, the Polish parliament must be dissolved and new elections held. If the current coalition cannot agree to approve the budget, a new coalition will have to be formed which coalition may also not be able to have the budget approved. The cycle will finally force a coalition between parties who are currently enemies.
If the current budget is not approved and elections are held, according to the most recent poll figures, the larger parties in the Polish parliament, the Law and Justice, and the Civic Platform, will be return to the Polish parliament in nearly equal numbers. Any changes that would occur in the makeup of the Polish parliament will generally occur among the minority parties. And there will not be any earthshaking changes but for the elimination, perhaps, of one of the current ruling coalition partners, the League of Polish Families.
Assuming that this election scenario is correct, the party, either Law and Justice or Civic Platform, that would be asked to form the government would have to have a budget passed. But according to the poll numbers, neither of these parties would have sufficient number of people in the Parliament to assure passage of the bill.
So if Law and Justice were returned to power, it would have a budget that it would try to get approved again and it would meet the same opposition that it is meeting now.
If the Civic Platform were to come to the Polish parliament as the majority party, it would have a different budget but it also would not have enough people in the Parliament to pass that budget. So it would have to go into coalition, or work with current political enemies, to try to have its budget passed.
The most useful minority parties for Civic platform would be the Samoobrona party, which is a leftist party that is currently pushing for increased spending and expanded social programs that are liable to place the Polish financial condition in jeopardy. The other party would be the ex-communist party SLD. But the Civic Platform has said that it would not go into coalition with either of these.
So if a budget is to pass, there has to be some agreement between the Civic Platform and the Law and Justice Party. They may not fall into a formal coalition, but as a matter of necessity they may have to come up with a budget compromise to take the country out of a no budget election cycle.
The enemies will simply have to work together.
