PM says incumbent party will try to form gov't if asked by president

Mateusz Morawiecki, Poland’s prime minister, said on Sunday evening that if the president entrusts his party with the task of governing, it will try to form a stable government.

Morawiecki made the statement following publication of an exit poll after Sunday’s general election, which put his conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party in first place but without an overall parliamentary majority.

According to an Ipsos exit poll, PiS would get 200 seats in the 460-member Sejm, the lower house of parliament.

„If the president entrusts the mission to the winning party’s candidate, we will try in all certainty to build a stable government which will lead Poland through the difficult reefs we face,” Mateusz Morawiecki told state-owned broadcaster TVP Info.

The prime minister went on to say that Monday’s results may differ from the exit poll’s predictions and that „we may wake up to entirely different numbers and that will create totally different prospects.”

Asked which parties PiS may consider forming a coalition with, Morawiecki replied: „We are in a position to talk with anyone who shares our vision of Poland, who knows that a stable government is necessary for the good of our country, that all the disturbances ahead of us… can be addressed in the proper way and settled through a stable governing coalition, not through a multi-coloured coalition that has no common ground apart from a hatred of PiS.”

Morawiecki was referring to a likely coalition of three main opposition parties, the centrist Civic Coalition, the centre-right Third Way and the New Left, which together secured 248 seats, comfortably above the 231-seat parliamentary majority threshold.

According to the exit poll, PiS secured 36.8 percent of the vote and would get 200 seats in the Sejm, the lower house of the Polish parliament.

If the poll is confirmed by the actual election result, which should be known on Tuesday, it would mean the party will fall short of getting the 231 seats needed to form a majority despite it being biggest party in parliament. PiS has been in power for eight years.

Despite the fact that KO came second on 31.6 percent and would only get 163 seats, the party’s previous arrangements with two other opposition parties, the centre-right Third Way and the New Left, make it viable for the three to form a ruling coalition with a parliamentary majority.

The Third Way received 13 percent and the New Left 8.6 percent, according to the Ipsos poll, and would receive 55 and 30 seats, respectively.

The combined number of seats of the three main opposition parties is 248, according to Ipsos, comfortably above the 231-seat majority threshold.

The far-right Confederation came fifth on 6.2 percent and would get 12 seats.

At 2.4 percent, the Non-Partisan Local Government Activists fell below the 5-percent threshold required for parliamentary representation.

The turnout estimated by Ipsos was 72.9 percent.

Under the Polish constitution, Andrzej Duda, the country’s president, has to call the first session of the new parliament within 30 days of the election.

After the first session, he has 14 days to appoint a prime minister.

PiS also decided to run a four-question referendum concurrently with the parliamentary vote, but the referendum likely failed due to too low a turnout. According to Ipsos, the turnout was 40 percent of eligible voters, while more than 50 percent are required for it to be valid.

The referendum questions concerned voter approval for the EU’s migrant relocation plan, the privatisation of state-owned companies, the dismantling of a fence on the border with Belarus and raising the retirement age.

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