POLAND: POLISH PRIME minister Donald Tusk said yesterday he was "moderately satisfied" with the extra eight seats his centre-right Civic Platform won in weekend European elections.
His enthusiasm at capturing half of the 50 seats on offer - a reflection of a shift right across the continent - was dampened by a turnout of just one in four voters. That was 4 per cent up on 2004 but still represented one of the lowest voter turnouts in the bloc.
The Civic Platform managed to get all of its candidates into the new parliament, including Poland's former European commissioner Danuta Hübner.
Mr Tusk said he was happy that voters had ignored the campaign of the leading opposition party Law and Justice (PiS), which had urged voters to use the poll to give the government a "yellow card".
PiS, headed by former prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, came in second with 27 per cent of the vote. Mr Kaczynski said that, although the campaign had "not been an easy one", his party had managed to double its 2004 result. He urged the PO to adopt as its own the PiS campaign slogan "More for Poland".
"Poland still does not have the same rights in the EU and Poles are not equal as EU citizens, something we have to resolve," he said.
Bucking a European trend, Poland's left (SLD-UP) gained about 12 per cent nationwide, which party leaders described as a sign that, after years of in-fighting, a "new open left" has a chance in domestic politics.
"There is a clear third power again in Polish politics," said SLD leader Grzegorz Napieralski.
The low turnout did not benefit the smaller parties, all of which failed to clear the 5 per cent hurdle. The Libertas Polska party polled just over 1 per cent, failing to interest voters in its anti- Lisbon and anti-bureaucracy message. The party paid Solidarity co-founder Lech Walesa a reported €100,000 to appear at campaign rallies in Madrid and Rome.
After he made Libertas, candidate Artur Zawisza said: "We respect that every man is the architect of his own fortune." By ignoring Libertas, Polish voters bucked another trend towards extreme-right candidates. Libertas Polska allied itself with leading figures in Poland's League of Polish Families (LPR), an extreme right, fundamentalist Christian grouping. A coalition partner in the last PiS-lead government, LPR failed to make it into the national parliament. Its chance at a European comeback has now failed.
