Poland’s Pending Political Earthquake
Classified Polnews
How long will Poland’s main political parties take to resist the ever increasing stress that will eventually split them into minor irritants on the Polish political scene? Two Polish politicians that have the support of the people, one from each party, hold the answer as to whether Poland will have its final revolution.
Poland
Former Prime Minister, and now Bank PKO BP CEO, Kaszimierz Marcinkiewicz is the most popular politician in Poland. A recent poll indicated that 63% of the Polish people would vote for him.
Jan Rokita, a leading member of the oppositon party Civic Platform, is engaged in a behind the scenes tussle with party leader Donald Tusk. Since most comments by senior party members seem to support Tusk, Rokita may soon find another home.
Sensing the future, a poll was run and reported by the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza It showed that 44.5% of the people would support a political party headed by Marcinkiewicz and Rokita.
Marcinkiewizc now sits in the catbirds seat with a nice income as PKO BP CEO. Will he decide to stay there or will he come back into the political fray?
As Prime Minister, he spent a lot of time touring the country looking more like a presidential candidate than a prime minister. He made friends and boosted his popularity, a popularity that has not dropped even after he was fired, lost the election for the presidency of Warsaw and took a political appointment in a bank position for which many claim he is unqualified.
There is little doubt that were he to return to politics and go head to head with either of the Kaczynski brothers in any election, be it for the President of Poland or control of the Polish Parliament, he would likely win. But will he return to politics?
The current political situation is essentially a stalemate. Polls show that the Civic Platform and Law and Justice parties each hover in the mid 20 to mid 30 percentile quite consistently. There is little on the horizon that would cause any significant increase in popularity of either party.
The problems that Andrzej Lepper, leader of the Government Coalition party Samoobrona, is having may create enough waves for the Law And Justice party to lose control and be forced to face new elections. See Poland’s Sex Scandal Grows For Lepper
If new elections come to be, will Marcinkiewicz ignore his opportunity or risk the chance of his popularity eroding the longer he is out of the political mainstream?
That is not likely. Marcinkiewicz is a politician who enjoys the limelight. With Rokita available for the picking and early polls showing that the two of them could likely combine and control any new government, he and Rokita are likely to make the jump.
And as he and Rokita jumped, others from the Law And Justice party and the Civic Platform would jump with them.
The result would be an earthshaking change in Polish politics. The old revolutionaries such as Tusk and Kaczynski would have seen their days. Involved they might be. But the driving forces they would not be.
It is just a matter of time.
See more on Marcinkiewicz
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