Poles decide on country’s future direction in presidential election
● ‘Too close to call’ say exit polls as Hong Kong and Spain also vote
Exit polls were “too close to call” as the polls closed last night after voters in Poland cast ballots in the country’s razor-close presidential runoff between the conservative, populist incumbent and the liberal, pro-europe mayor of Warsaw.
In a battle that reflects deep divisions, president Andrzej Duda, who is backed by the ruling right-wing Law and Justice party and the government, has campaigned on traditional values and social spending in the mostly Catholic nation as he seeks a second five-year term.
The full results will not be known until early this week.
Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, a former member of the European Parliament, jumped into the race relatively late to oppose Duda’s denigration of urban liberals, the LGBT community and other minorities and to counter an erosion of democratic rights under the ruling party. He is representing the main opposition Civic Platform party that was in power in from 2007 to 2015.
The latest polls show the race between the two 48-year-old candidates may be decided by a very small margin. The result is expected to lead to starkly different paths for the future of Poland, at least until 2023, when the next parliamentary election is scheduled.
The ballot was supposed to be held in May but after much political wrangling was delayed by health concerns amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Some 30 million voters were eligible to cast ballots and turnout was expected to be higher than the 64.5 per cent in the first round of voting on 28 June .
Due to the pandemic, voting was held under strict sanitary conditions. Poland has registered over 37,000 infections and almost 1,600 deaths.
Voters wore masks and gloves, maintained a safe dis tance and used hand sanitiser. They used their own pens to mark ballot papers. Election officials wore masks and sat apart from each other. Ballot boxes were regularly disinfected and the polling stations were ventilated.
The final results are expected early in the week.
Meanwhile, more than 4.4 million Spaniards in two northern regions were voting in regional elections amid tight security measures to avoid more outbreaks of the virus, which has claimed more than 28,000 lives in the country. Regional authorities in both the Basque Country and Galicia prohibited more than 400 people who tested positive for the virus from going to polling stations to vote. They would have to vote by mail or delegate their vote to another person.
Voters had to wear face masks and remain 1.5 metres apart in polling stations, which were equipped with hand sanitisers.
In north east Catalonia, more than 200,000 people have spent a week unable to leave their county due to an outbreak. Authorities are also concerned about a smaller outbreak in the municipality of Hospitalet, which forms part of the greater Barcelona area and has one of the highest population densities in Spain.
Elsewhere, hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong residents turned up over the weekend to vote in an unofficial two-day primary election held by the city’s pro-democracy camp as it geared up to field candidates for an upcoming legislative poll.
The vote was held two weeks after Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on the semi-autonomous territory in a move widely seen as chipping away at the “one country, two systems” framework.
Throngs of people lined up at polling booths in the summer heat to vote, despite a warning last week by Hong Kong’s constitutional affairs minister that the primaries could be in breach of the new national security law.
On Saturday alone, nearly 230,000 people voted at polling booths set up across the city, exceeding organisers’ estimates of a turnout of 170,000 over the weekend.