Poland: Poland’s opposition parties have signed a coalition agreement as part of their efforts to form a new government after winning the majority of votes in October elections.
Mr. Donald Tusk, the opposition’s candidate for Prime Minister, announced that a deal had been reached. The new group includes parties with various ideologies but is united around strengthening Poland’s ties to the European Union.
“We are ready to take responsibility for Poland in the coming years,” Mr. Tusk, a former Prime Minister and head of the liberal Civic Coalition (KO), told reporters.
The parties, including the Civic Coalition, the economically liberal Third Way, and the left-leaning New Left, succeeded in securing a collective majority of votes in the October 15 election.
However, the country’s President Mr. Andrzej Duda has called on the governing nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, which took more votes than any single party in the elections, to form a government.
According to reports, this effort is widely expected to fail since the opposition, calling themselves the “democratic opposition”, has pledged to strengthen democracy in Poland after PiS was accused of undermining the independence of the judiciary during its period in power.
The latest agreement stressed that the parties will scrap a Constitutional Tribunal ruling from 2020 that instituted a near-total ban on abortion in Poland.
“In our agreement, we found a common denominator for the issues we want to implement,” Mr. Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, leader of the centre-right Polish Peasants’ Party (PSL), commented.
“They concern themselves with support for families, employees, entrepreneurs, the Polish countryside, education, healthcare, and women’s rights,” Mr. Kosiniak added.
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