Poland Gears Up for Early Presidential Elections

17 June 2010

Presidential candidates Jaroslaw Kaczynski from the Law and Justice party and Bronislaw Komorowski, Parliament Speaker and acting president, stand together after a joint debate in the Polish TV, in Warsaw, Poland, 13 Jun 2010

Poland is preparing to elect a new president on Sunday, with a center-right and far-right candidates in the lead. The election is being held earlier than originally scheduled, following the death of Polish President Lech Kaczynski in a plane crash. The crash is still casting its shadow over Polish politics.

Sunday, Polish voters cast their ballots, electing their next president nearly four months earlier than originally planned. The election date was moved up after Poland's president, Lech Kaczynski, was killed along with 95 others in a plane crash on April 10th near the Russian town, Smolensk.

There are two front-runners. One is Bronislaw Komorowski, from the governing center-right Civic Platform party. The other is Jaroslaw Kaczynski, twin brother of the late president, who is running for the far-right Law and Justice Party.

Jacek Kucharczyk, of the Warsaw-based Institute of Public Affairs, says the crash at Smolensk did more than just change the date of the election. He says it could also affect its outcome.

"Before April 10, most people thought that Lech Kaczynski was not electable for a second term," noted Kucharczyk. "Most people thought that Civic Platform would recapture the presidency. The Smolensk air disaster changed a lot of that. Suddenly, it became almost impossible to criticize the legacy of the late president and this outburst of national emotions, after the disaster, changed the balance of power on the political scene."