Polish president tasks current PM with forming new government despite his lack of a majority

Poland’s president has tapped the current prime minister to try to form a new government even though the ruling Law and Justice party lost its parliamentary majority in a national election three weeks ago.

President Andrzej Duda made the announcement on Monday following the October 15 election in which the right-wing Law and Justice received more votes than any single party but lost to an alliance of three opposition parties.

An ally of the current government, Duda had said the two candidates for prime minister were Mateusz Morawiecki and main opposition leader Donald Tusk, a former Polish prime minister and top European Union official.

While his decision triggers the process of forming a new government, it nevertheless was expected to delay the establishment of a functioning government because lawmakers are not likely to give Morawiecki the necessary approval for his Cabinet. The first session of the new parliament is November 13.

Duda stressed that Morawiecki’s party should be given the chance to stay in power since it was the single biggest vote-getter.

The president said that if Morawiecki is unsuccessful, he will transfer the mission of forming the government to the second-largest party in parliament, Tusk’s Civic Coalition.

Under Poland’s Constitution, the first step in forming a government is for the president to choose a prime minister-designate and to task him or her with nominating a Cabinet, which must receive parliamentary approval. Only then can the president formally appoint the prime minister and the government.

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If the Cabinet fails to gain approval, the process is repeated with another prime minister-designate.

Law and Justice has governed Poland since 2015. In the new parliament, the party will be far short of a majority and unable to pass laws on its own. It will have 194 votes in the 460-member lower house but has no potential coalition partner.

Tusk represents the aggregated opposition majority that won 248 seats. The opposition bloc consists of Tusk’s centrist Civic Coalition, the Third Way – a coalition of the agrarian Polish People’s Party and centrist Poland 2050 – and the Left party.

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Last month, Tusk met EU chief Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels to discuss the issue.

He insisted his compatriots had shown “that the anti-democratic and anti-European mode doesn’t have to be a trend, that it’s just seasonal turbulence”.

Poland’s relations with the EU’s governing institutions have been strained since the PiS came to power due to perceived back-pedalling on democracy by Warsaw.

Brussels had blocked Poland’s access to €35 billion (US$38 billion) in EU Covid pandemic recovery funds because of a stand-off over judicial reforms.

Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse