TUSK PICKED AS LEADER AFTER RIVAL IS REJECTED
Poland's newly elected Parliament torpedoed a long-shot effort by rightwing forces to stay in power and chose opposition leader Donald Tusk as the nation's new prime minister Monday. The decision ushers the biggest and most populous country on the European Union's formerly communist eastern flank into a new era.
Legislators, as expected, rejected a new government proposed by the caretaker prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, whose party, Law and Justice, lost its parliamentary majority in an October election.
As Parliament shot down Law and Justice's effort to keep power, opposition legislators taunted Morawiecki and his supporters over their defeat, chanting “Donald Tusk, Donald Tusk.”
Later Monday, Parliament nominated and confirmed Tusk, 66, as Poland's new leader, drawing cheers and applause from his allies and a sour denunciation of the new prime minister as a “German agent” from Jaroslaw Kaczynski, chair of Law and Justice and Poland's de facto leader since 2015. Tusk, a veteran centrist politician who led Poland from 2007 to 2014, is expected to be sworn in Wednesday by President Andrzej Duda, an ally of Law and Justice.
“This is a truly wonderful day, not only for me, but for all those who have deeply believed for many years that things will get better, that we will chase away the darkness, that we will chase away evil,” Tusk said after being confirmed as prime minister by the Sejm, the more important lower house of the Polish Parliament.
The return to power of Tusk, endorsed as Poland's new leader with 248 votes for and 201 against in the Sejm, completed an ill-tempered period of transition that Law and Justice had sought to prolong as long as possible, despite losing its majority.
Tusk, the leader of the main opposition party, Civic Coalition, is expected to announce his Cabinet today.
The installation of a government headed by Tusk could be a drastic shift away from Poland's direction during eight years of Law and Justice rule, a period marked by close relations between the governing party and the Roman Catholic Church and quarrels with the EU.