WARSAW – Whatever the outcome, Poland’s cliffhanger presidential run-off Sunday may have just sounded the starting gun on the next campaign for prime minister.
At the Mała Warszawa theatre in the gritty Praga district of Warsaw, Karol Nawrocki – a political unknown mere months ago – emerged from election night convinced of victory.
Despite his scandal-ridden campaign, a late, updated exit poll handed the conservative candidate a wafer-thin lead over liberal Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski.
If confirmed by official results on Monday from the country’s electoral commission, it would mark a seismic jolt to Poland’s political landscape – and a looming headache for Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
Warning for Tusk Though both from the Civic Platform (KO) coalition, Tusk pointedly refrained from speaking at Trzaskowski’s election night event in a crammed hall of Warsaw’s National Museum of Ethnography.
Sunday’s vote was seen by many analysts as an informal referendum on Tusk’s centrist, pro-European government. Now, regardless of the winner, the thin margin will likely be spun by Tusk’s opponents as a rejection of his agenda.
Senior Law and Justice (PiS) lawmaker Przemysław Czarnek said his party would “begin very energetic