NEWS ANALYSIS: Komorowski's win boosts Poland's image abroad

By Dominika Maslikowski Jul 5, 2010, 16:49 GMT

Warsaw - Bronislaw Komorowski's win in the Polish presidential runoff election will boost Warsaw's image abroad but will also put pressure on his centre-right party to prove itself domestically before next year's parliamentary elections.

Komorowski, of the Civic Platform party, won the Sunday election with 53.01 per cent of the vote, according to official results. His opponent Jaroslaw Kaczynski, of the right-wing Law and Justice party, came a close second, with 46.99 per cent of the vote.

Komorowski's victory means his Civic Platform party now controls both the executive and legislative branches.

Analysts said the monopoly would boost Warsaw's image abroad and end the days of frequent spats between the president and premier that had previously sent conflicting messages to the European Union about who was in charge of Polish foreign policy.

A power struggle between Prime Minister Donald Tusk and President Lech Kaczynski, who died in a plane crash in April, made Poland look like a divided nation with no unifying vision that it could present to the EU, critics said.

'Now the government and presidency will be from the same party, which will unite Poland's foreign policy, which is very important because previously Poland had a huge problem with its image,' said analyst Agnieszka Lada of the Warsaw-based Institute of Public Affairs.

Komorowski's positive image in the EU will be crucial to boosting the country's influence as it prepares to hold the rotating presidency in 2011, Lada said.

But that monopoly on power could ultimately hurt Civic Platform as it gets ready to run in parliamentary elections set for the autumn of 2011.

During the year it will be in power, Civic Platform will have to prove itself and will no longer be able to blame the president for failing to deliver on promises made.

'Platform, you have all the power now, show us what you've got!' said a headline in the tabloid Fakt.

Civic Platform had criticised Lech Kaczynski for frequently vetoing pension and health care reforms. Kaczynski had also come under attack for making statements that antagonised Russia and Germany.

Komorowski had pledged during his campaign to modernise the health sector, to withdraw from Afghanistan by 2012 and to give students a 50-per-cent discount on travel.

Critics said some of Komorowski's reforms would raise the national debt or make the party too unpopular before parliamentary elections, where more real power is at stake than in the presidency.

'They're much more interested in winning the elections this autumn,' said Pawel Cymcyk, an independent market analyst.

Civic Platform will not raise taxes or privatise any more government holdings because that could cost them support, Cymcyk said.

Komorowski's win raises Law and Justice's chances in the parliamentary elections because Civic Platform no longer has any alibis, said Arkadiusz Radwan, a researcher at the Allerhand Institute, a Krakow-based institute of legal studies.

But certain reforms - like raising the retirement age and ending early retirement for government workers - cannot be delayed, Radwan said.

'Someone will have to decide on courageous reforms,' Radwan said. 'And here's another thing that worries me about Komorowski: that such reforms must be made despite the opposition to them. They cannot be made on a consensus basis.'