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Phantom presidential election in Poland

2020-05-10T22:00:05.043Z



A new date for the Polish presidential election will be set within two weeks at the latest, the National Election Commission announced on Sunday, having officially noted that the vote scheduled for today had not taken place. The Poles were to elect their president this Sunday, but the polling stations did not open, no one was able to vote, and the election, neither formally canceled nor adjourned, should go down in history as a rare case of polling ghost.

At the end of the day, the National Election Commission released a resolution declaring that "it was not possible to vote for the candidates" for the supreme magistracy and that consequently the president of the lower house would have 14 days to fix a new polling date. The election must be held within a maximum of 60 days from its decision. This solution, explained to the president of the Commission Sylwester Marciniak to the journalists, allows not to ask the Supreme Court to declare the invalidity of the election.

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The ruling Law and Justice (PiS) conservative party had considered this formal step at the Supreme Court on Wednesday and even predicted its outcome. Which made political scientist Stanislaw Mocek say that Poland "plunged into the vapors of the absurd" , since politicians seemed to "give an order to the Supreme Court" . Since then, many constitutional experts have expressed doubts about the competence of the Supreme Court to issue such a decision.

For Sylwester Marciniak, the situation resulting from the absence of the vote on Sunday "resembles that of the absence of candidates or the presence of a single candidate, which results in the non-holding of the election" . This state of affairs, which is still fraught with uncertainty, including on a constitutional level, is due to the coronavirus pandemic and the inability of the ruling nationalist conservatives and the opposition to agree on a constitutional and mutually acceptable solution. .

“Election day without election”

"We have election day today without an election," summed up on his Facebook page a Social Democratic deputy (SLD), Tomasz Trela, after having organized a happening in front of a closed school usually converted into a polling station in Lodz. . “The polling station is closed, which means that someone canceled the election. But it is unclear who did it and what it was based on, " he told reporters.

The movement of the citizens of the Polish Republic (Obywatele RP) for its part organized a demonstration in Warsaw to demand a fundamental reform of the state. “The state is unable to hold the election scheduled for today. Or the ballot, or whatever, call whatever comedy they prepared for us , " one of the leaders of the movement, Pawel Kasprzak, told reporters.

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The confusion surrounding the presidential election results from a bundle of competing interests and controversial decisions. Faced with the high risk of contamination with the new coronavirus in polling stations, the PiS passed a law imposing the election by mail. But this text, criticized by the constitutionalists and rejected by the opposition in the Senate, arrived too late to allow the organization of the ballot.

At the same time, the PiS refused an adjournment, requested by the opposition, whose candidates could not campaign, and wanted by three out of four Poles according to polls. Under the terms of the Constitution, to adjourn the presidential election, a state of natural disaster would have to be declared. Officially, the PiS considered that the health situation did not require it. Unofficially, he suggested that multinationals present in Poland could demand huge damages that the state would find it difficult to pay.

But for the opposition and many commentators, there was another reason: the conservative party wanted to ensure without delay the victory of outgoing president Andrzej Duda, from its ranks. Andrzej Duda, who led the polls, could have been re-elected in the first round. But its chances of winning may weaken over time, when the economic impact of the pandemic is felt in businesses and households, and unemployment rises.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2020-05-10

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