PO-PiS again neck and neck

That's because the system has been defectively designed, making typing in Polish extremely clumsy and time-consuming. Try to wirte the word ćmą (ćma/moth in the instrumental case) on a texting device for instance. If they can't have separate keys for the Polish letters as comptuer keyboards do then at least someone should have thought of including an ALT GR key to accent the applicable letters.

By 2015 PO will be down around 15% like SLD and PiS will be up around 45% or better. An enfeebled PO might join PiS as a junior coalition partner. That's how it was supposed to be in the first place. But the 2005 election shock suffered by PO made them bitter and vindictive and incapable of any meaningful

cooperation. Hence the exotic PiS-LRP-Samoobrona coaliton -- a loveless marirage of convenience. And then there was PO's all-out anti-PiS campaign. Like schoolboys, the Platformers wanted to put down and score points agaisnt PiS. If PiS said water is wet, PO would counter that it is dry, etc, etc. ad nauseum.

How long will they continue waging the Polish-Polish war? Probably it won't end until Tusk and Kaczyński bow out.

Very unlikely. For a start, it would be unheard of in Polish politics - PiS do not have that kind of support from the electorate in general. They would need to capture the entire centre ground to achieve such a result - and the centre simply is not drawn to PiS. Only a fool would say that they don't have 30% of the vote in their pocket - but they are missing that crucial centre ground that determines elections. For that reason, they're not going to get 45% - they've already dropped from 42% to 33% in the space of a couple of weeks.


Not likely. PO know PiS too well - they know that they have an internal tendency of making an utter mess of things. All they'd have to do is sit back and wait for the next election - exactly as they did in 2005.


Why are you blaming PO for that? They were under no obligation - as I've said thousands of times - to enter a coalition with PiS. It served PO well to refuse to join any coalition - they watched as the centrist voters fled PiS and reaped the benefits of not being associated with them.


There was no reason for PiS to go into coalition with them. They could have offered PO a deal they couldn't refuse.


Which worked a treat. PiS had no idea how to counter it - and they even wrote their own headlines by getting involved in one murky affair after another.


Which led PO to a massive landslide victory in 2007. Politics, Polonius - this is how it works. Anyway, PiS did a fantastic job of burying themselves then.


It's been going on for over 30 years, it's not going to end anytime soon. Until the "Solidarność" generation retires or dies, nothing will change.

They did, but PO refused anyway. Although PiS won, they offered PO just as many cabinet. The PO-PiS coalition would have gone ahead if, as expected, there was PM from Kraków (Rokita) and a president from Kashubia (Tusk). That had been a foregone conclusion all along. But a double defeat threw the Platformers into shock. PO lost their marbles and went bonkers. The rest is history. Maybe you weren't in Poand at the time so you have to rely on hearsay rather than first-hand experience.

Nope, the deal on the table wasn't good enough to gain PO's support. PO knew that PiS were in a very tough situation - they had won the election, but they only had what, 27% of the vote? They also knew that the alternative for PiS was to form a coalition with Samobroona and LPR - which would never work in reality. For that reason, PiS (if they wanted to form a government that had a chance of working) needed to offer PO an offer they couldn't refuse - which would have almost certainly meant offering PO a majority of the ministries and also giving the most powerful ones to them. PO had absolutely nothing to gain from sharing power with PiS in terms of long term politics.


It would've been interesting had the tables been reversed and PO won both elections. I'm almost certain PO would have lost the 2009 election in this case - Rokita has proved himself to be unstable, and Tusk wouldn't have been a good President at that time.


As I remember, the general attitude before the 2005 election was that both parties were likely to enter some sort of coalition and thus it didn't matter who one voted for, especially if you were centrist. Even the Marcinkiewicz government was working to a certain extent.


Why do you say that they went bonkers? I'd say that they wisely realised that it made much more sense to sit back - they had nothing to gain by working with PiS.


I rely on common sense observations at the time. PiS - by blaming PO - show themselves exactly to be what they are - politically naive.

It wasn't good enough for the Cynic Platform which comprised two basic fetaures: warm tap water for the rabble and a good place at the trough for the party elite. Nothing has changed since then desptie the string of scams, broken promises and nepotistic rule.

Sort yourself out Polonius, otherwise you'll get suspended

moved from another thread


Don't PiS currently top the opinion polls?

Correct, but those same opinion polls show 70% of voters are against them, hence their views are a minority view.

Their views are possibly more representative than those of PO - it's a close run thing

Personally, I don't like PiS any more than you do. However, unlike yourself, I'm not going to attempt to convince myself and others that Poland is as I would like it to be.