POLAND: Polish prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski was searching for new political allies yesterday to avoid a snap election after his coalition with two populist parties fell apart after just four months.
Yesterday Mr Kaczynski sacked his deputy, the leader of the left-wing farmers' Self Defence party, Andrzej Lepper, and tried to woo enough MPs from Mr Lepper's party to give him a parliamentary majority.
If he doesn't manage this by Monday, Mr Kaczynski said he would ask the president, his twin brother Lech, to dissolve parliament and call early elections.
The prime minister said Mr Lepper had "failed to use this chance to participate in a good government".
Mr Lepper said Mr Kaczynski was a "boorish brawler" who brought down the coalition by breaking agreements and not consulting him on decisions.
"They will agree only with people who are on their knees before them.
"They are not made for constructing, but for destroying," Mr Lepper said, echoing the words earlier this year of former Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, who clashed with the twins in the early 1990s.
