2023-10-30 14:49 update: 2023-11-01, 11:46
Photo PAP/Leszek Szymański
Negotiations of a possible coalition between Law and Justice (PiS) and other parties can start once Mateusz Morawiecki has been designated as prime minister, Piotr Muller, a government spokesperson, has said.
So far Andrzej Duda, the Polish president, has refrained from formally appointing someone as prime minister, who will then be tasked with forming a government.
Duda has only said that there are two candidates to be the prime minister of a new government: Mateusz Morawiecki, the current PiS prime minister, and Donald Tusk, the leader of Civic Coalition, the main opposition grouping.
"The official conversations can start when the president (Andrzej Duda - PAP) decides to assign the formation of a new government to Mateusz Morawiecki," Mueller said on Monday for state-owned broadcaster TVP Info.
Although it received the most votes in October 15's general election, PiS fell short of securing a parliamentary majority. This has left it searching for support, either by striking an alliance with another party, or, it appears, by prising off MPs sympathetic to its cause from other parties.
Mueller said that there are politicians whose political orientations align with those of PiS, even within the Civic Coalition.
He added that there are also opposition MPs who do not agree with some of the ideas of their potential coalition allies.
"Of course we are probing MPs of the opposition and some of them don't agree, for example, with the notion of forced European integration, or with some ideas of the New Left," Muller said in an apparent reference to recent statements made by politicians mainly of the Third Way, in which they said that there would be no place for "matters determined by personal values" in a coalition agreement.
This appeared to suggest that the Third Way, which has a conservative leaning, could be at odds with its more liberal opposition allies on issues such as abortion, and this, in turn, could be exploited by PiS.
"There is a group of MPs who are sensible about this," said Mueller. "They have a similar approach, but as long as there is no designation of our candidate for prime minister, they have no desire to make themselves known, because of how they may be treated by the 'liberal elite.'"
He added that he is unable at the moment to say whether MPs from the far-right Confederation party could be potential allies of PiS, because these talks have not yet taken place. (PAP)
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