Polish vote winners pledge tax cuts, stronger European ties
WARSAW (AFP) — Flush from a landslide win over the right-wing Kaczynski twins in a snap election, Poland's liberals vowed Monday to recalibrate US and European ties and lure expatriates back home.
With nearly all ballots counted, pro-business opposition leader Donald Tusk's Civic Platform (PO) won a projected 209 seats in parliament, routing the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party of Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski and his identical twin brother, President Lech Kaczynski, with 166 seats.
Civic Platform's decisive victory drew cheers in Brussels but some concern in Washington as Tusk pledged to mend frayed ties with European Union and NATO partners and rethink Warsaw's military engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In an interview after Sunday's parliamentary election, Tusk told a Russian newspaper that the Kaczynskis' single-minded defence of national interests had done more harm than good.
"One gets the impression in Poland today that the Jaroslaw Kaczynski government was not very successful in dealing with the task of securing good relations with Russia and Germany," Tusk told Monday's Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
"Given that both sides are dominated by emotions, I believe that the signals of the will to improve relations which Civic Platform is sending to our neighbours will be understood correctly."
Tusk has also promised to cut taxes to stoke the already red-hot Polish economy and entice the more than one million Poles who have moved to Britain and Ireland seeking jobs to return home.
Expatriates as well as young, urban, centrist voters in Poland turned out in droves to end the Kaczynski duo's two-year grip on power. Participation reached almost 54 percent -- the highest level since the communists' fall in 1989.
"The heavy turnout in the cities killed us," Jacek Kurski, a strategist for the Kaczynskis' party, told news channel TVN24.
European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso hailed "the European spirit of the Polish people" following the liberals' victory, underscoring "the importance of Poland's contribution to the European Union."
For her part, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she hoped cooperation with Poland's new government "will be good."
The Kremlin also welcomed the win, saying it hoped a new government would end what they called a "demonisation" of Moscow by Warsaw.
Civic Platorm said the new government would adopt the EU charter of fundamental rights, which the conservatives had bitterly opposed, notably for its liberal stand on homosexuality.
Tusk has said he is also committed to strong transatlantic ties but vowed during the campaign to bring home soon 900 Polish troops serving in Iraq.
The liberals also want to reconsider the role of Poland's 1,200 troops in a NATO-led security force in Afghanistan.
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped Poland would stay the course in both missions, as officials in Moscow said they were optimistic Warsaw would now reverse its veto on a sweeping EU-Russian partnership deal.
The Kaczynskis had also clashed with NATO allies as well as Russia over their strong support for US plans to base part of a missile shield system in Poland, an emerging powerhouse of some 38 million people.
Gates told reporters on a visit to Kiev that he hoped talks on the shield "will continue as before."
Civic Platform fell short of its goal of a ruling majority and was expected to form a coalition with the moderate Polish Peasants' Party, which won 31 seats.
Sunday's election was called two years early because of the collapse of the conservatives' three-party coalition in August. Its erstwhile far-right and populist allies were swept from parliament.
While Lech Kaczynski still has three years to go in his presidential term, the poll abruptly ended the brothers' unusual concentration of power.
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which had sparred with Warsaw over an invitation to monitor Poland's snap polls, said it approved of the vote despite worries about media bias.
Former president Lech Walesa, the Gdansk shipyard electrician who led the communist-era opposition trade union Solidarity, blasted two "scandalous" years of governance under the twins.
