WARSAW, Poland (AP) – It’s being called the biggest shock in Polish politics in years: President Bronislaw Komorowski apparently lost the first round of the country’s presidential election to a previously unknown 42-year-old member of the European Parliament.
The defeat for the communist-era dissident, who has longed polled as one of the nation’s most trusted leaders, is a sign that parliamentary elections this fall could be unpredictable. And it could even signal a possible return to power for Law and Justice, the right-wing group backing Sunday’s winning presidential candidate Andrzej Duda. It favors a more confrontational attitude to the European Union and neighbor Germany than that of the ruling Civic Platform.
A runoff in two weeks will decide the final outcome, but for now exit polls show that Komorowski took just 33 percent of the votes compared to more than 34 percent for Duda. The official results in Sunday’s vote, in which 11 candidates ran, are expected late Monday or Tuesday.
Even if the official outcome varies slightly from the exit poll, the result is undeniably a defeat for Komorowski, a center-right leader who earlier this year was expected to easily win far above 50 percent of the vote, avoiding a runoff altogether.
When Law and Justice ran the government, from 2005-2007, Poland clashed repeatedly with officials in Brussels and ties with ally Germany grew strained. The party has also been extremely critical of Russia. Party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski has blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for the death of his twin brother, the late President Lech Kaczynski, in a 2010 plane crash. No evidence has emerged to back up his theory.