The official results released by the Polish Electoral Commission corresponding to 95.22 percent of the count maintain the ruling party, Law and Justice (PiS), as the winner of Sunday’s parliamentary elections, although with a result that seems insufficient to reach the majority necessary to remain in power, not even with the support of his far-right allies.
The electoral body places PiS at 36.13 percent of the votes, so it will control 196 of the 460 seats in the Polish Parliament. The far-right Freedom and Independence Confederation, a potential ally, has achieved 7.18 percent of votes and 15 seats, so the 211 they total are very far from the 231 necessary for an investiture.
The Civic Platform headed by the former president of the European Council Donald Tusk is ‘a priori’ the one that has the most options to pilot the Government, thanks to the 30.03 percent (158 seats) that has already obtained the potential alliances with Third Way (14, 44 percent and 61 seats) and Left (8.43 percent and 30 seats). In fact, Tusk already declared himself the winner after knowing the exit polls on the same election night.
The Polish president, Andrezj Duda, wanted to highlight the “gigantic” participation rate, which in the absence of completing the count reaches 73.91 percent and is thus confirmed as the highest in the history of the Polish Third Republic, reports the official PAP news agency.
The results highlight that for the first time since 1989 the German minority will not have representation in the Polish Parliament.
It is now Duda’s responsibility to form a government and, barring any surprises, it will initially begin with a PiS candidate, whose list was once again headed in this election by the Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki. Several leaders of the ruling party have already announced that, if they are in charge, they will open a process of contacts with other parties.
Brussels avoids evaluating
The European Commission, for its part, has opted for caution and its spokesperson Eric Mamer has pointed out that the Community Executive “never” comments on electoral results in the different member states and that they will not do so on the new Government until it is formed. , “whatever it may be.”
Nor have they wanted to assess from Brussels how the possible change of command in Warsaw would affect the open files, including the Polish recovery plan whose first payment is still on hold pending reforms, and they have indicated that “there are no changes at the moment, in any way, linked to the electoral result”.
For its part, the observer mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has endorsed the electoral process in a statement, to the extent that it allowed citizens to choose between various options, but has warned of an abuse of public resources and a bias at the media level in favor of the ruling party.
The coordinator of the mission, Pia Kauma, has also stressed that the vote took place in a “complex” and “polarized” context in political terms, which was evident in “a campaign dominated by a tone of confrontation, with a “recurrent use of inflammatory rhetoric and personal attacks against the leaders of the main parties.”
