Election uncertainty may lead to crisis: PM’s aide

WARSAW: Poland cannot rule out an early parliamentary election if the political crisis over a presidential vote scheduled in May deepens, Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff Michal Dworczyk said yesterday.

The Polish Senate on Tuesday rejected a government proposal to hold a May 10 presidential election by postal ballot because of the coronavirus pandemic, a defeat for the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party that had been in a widely anticipated.

“We hope that there will be enough lawmakers who ... will adopt the draft bill. However, one also has to consider options in which the bill is not backed and then we will have to deal with a very serious political crisis,” Mr Dworczyk said.

“I think that such discussions have to be very cautious, but a scenario in which early elections take place cannot be excluded.”

The final say on the presidential election rests with the lower house of parliament, where PiS has a fragile majority. Some lawmakers in the PiS coalition partner had said they were against holding the presidential election in May.

The lower house of parliament is due to hold a final vote today on whether the country will conduct its presidential ballot this month. PiS is pushing to do it solely via an untested and disputed mail-in ballot process that international election monitors have warned may be vulnerable to fraud.

PiS has signalled it will seek to postpone the election until May 17 or May 23 to better prepare for the election if the new voting rules are approved. Its legislative proposal envisages a small shift in an election schedule, normally banned under Polish law.