POLAND: The leaders of Poland's three-party coalition government met for crisis talks in Warsaw yesterday after admitting independently of each other that the five-month-old administration "can't go on".
From the beginning, the alliance between the national conservative Law and Justice party and two smaller populist parties has been paralysed by political squabbles, most recently on the budget and Poland's military contribution to the Lebanon peacekeeping force.
Andrzej Lepper, leader of the left-wing Self Defence farmers' party, has led a call for increased spending on agriculture and education and has threatened to force an early general election in November unless he gets his way.
Despite austerity measures to control spending, Mr Lepper and his allies are calling for almost 8 billion zloty (€2 billion) extra for farmers and social welfare recipients. Other ministers are calling for an additional 4.3 billion zloty to increase pay for police officers and teachers and to attract foreign investment.
Meanwhile, Mr Lepper's Self Defence party and the Catholic, right-wing League of Polish Families (LPR) are increasingly unhappy at attempts by PiS to woo their parties' MPs - and their voters.
LPR leader Roman Giertych told Polish television yesterday ahead of the crisis talks that the coalition would survive, an indication of how he is doomed to success: a recent opinion poll showed that his party would fail to enter the next parliament if a snap election was called.
Mr Lepper is more confident as opinion polls show his party could increase its support and emerge as a stronger force in a new parliament.
He said the situation within the coalition was "very serious", accusing the PiS leaders of going behind their partners' backs to send 1,000 Polish soldiers to Lebanon.
After that claim, parliamentary president Marek Kuchcinski of PiS remarked: "I am sceptical whether it is possible to co-operate with Andrzej Lepper." Observers in Warsaw suggested yesterday that the crisis was just political posturing ahead of local elections in November.
Opposition leader Donald Tusk, of the liberal Civic Platform, said that early elections would only "confirm the senselessness of Polish politics".
Yesterday afternoon, a government spokesman said talks had averted an immediate end of the government, but the party leaders had yet to agree compromises on any of the contentious issues.
Wojciech Olejniczak, leader of the post-communist Democratic Left (SLD), said: "It looks as if the collapse of the coalition has already been decided; the question is just when the elections will be."
