Friday

29th Mar 2024

Polish ruling party to split today

While Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller attends the EU summit in Brussels, his own ruling party, the Left Democratc Alliance (SLD) is about to collapse.

Prime Minister Leszek Miller who enjoys, according to opinion polls, only five percent support of the voters is to see his governing party split today as a group of rebel SLD members abandon ship.

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  • Leszek Miller - at his last EU summit? (Photo: European Commission)

For several weeks, Mr Miller has not only been fighting for a Nice-based voting system in the EU Constitution but also mounting opposition within his own political group.

Since the time of the last parliamentary election in September 2001, support for the ruling social democratic party dropped from 41 percent to around 10 percent.

According to SLD deputy Bogdan Lewandowski, a group of MPs is to announce today a decision on setting up a new political party, the Polish Socialdemocracy(Socjaldemokracja Polska).

This group would be led by the speaker of the Sejm, lower house of the Parliament, Marek Borowski.

It is not known yet if Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, who was mentioned in earlier speculation as one of the rebels, will join the new group.

The split within the ruling party could eventually lead to an earlier parliamentary election in Poland. The center-right opposition PO party called yesterday for a national election to be held together with European elections on 13 June.

Wider implications

In an interview with the Polish Radio this morning, Mr Miller refused to comment on a split in the party and whether or not he would take part in the next EU summit, scheduled for June.

But the collapse of the Miller government could have much wider implications for the on-going negotiations on the European Constitution.

Discussions are already being delayed while Spain's incoming government gets put in place.

If Warsaw were to go through the same process, EU leaders may be hard pressed to keep their June deadline for finishing treaty negotiations - particularly as it is unclear what position a new government would have on the treaty blueprint.

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