WARSAW, Poland, 13 Nov (AP) — The Polish parliament gathered for the first time Monday after an election last month heralded a change of course for the Central European nation at a time of war across the border in Ukraine.
Newly elected lawmakers stood and sang the national anthem in the Sejm, the lower house of parliament, along with former presidents, prime ministers and other dignitaries who stood in a gallery above them. President Andrzej Duda addressed the body, calling for the country to rise above its political divisions.
Duda, whose term runs for another year and a half, is expected to have a difficult relationship with the new legislature because he is a conservative aligned with Law and Justice, which has ruled Poland for the past eight years but lost its majority in the Oct. 15 election. He vowed to use his power of the presidential veto to defend “controversial” solutions.
He triggered laughter from lawmakers when he said: “The constitutional order must be preserved, I will not agree to any circumvention or bending of the law.” Law and Justice and Duda himself have been accused of violating procedures in past years.
Lawmakers were still due to take their oaths and elect a speaker.
The outgoing prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, must also resign with his government, though he is expected to remain as a caretaker premier, perhaps for weeks, because Duda has delayed the transition of power.
Duda will entrust Morawiecki with the mission of forming another government in a ceremony Monday evening, his office said. But he is widely expected to fail.
Morawiecki’s ruling party received more votes than any other single party in the election but fell short of a majority, getting 194 seats in the 460-member lower house, or Sejm. The party has no coalition partner and its attempt to build a government is seen as doomed to fail. The attempt could delay Poland having a new functioning government by up to four weeks.
The winning alliance includes parties ranging from conservatives to the left. They ran separately but promising to work together to restore democratic norms after eight years of rule by Law and Justice, a nationalist conservative party that was in conflict with the European Union.
The winning coalition alliance, in contrast, holds a majority of 248 seats in the Sejm. The party leaders signed a coalition agreement and say they are ready to start governing. They say they aim to repair foreign alliances and will work to release billions of euros in EU funds that were frozen due to Law and Justice’s erosion of judicial independence.
Their candidate for prime minister is Donald Tusk, 66, an experienced politician who held that position already from 2007-14 and then went on to be a top leader of the EU in the role of European Council president from 2014-19.
The coalition’s candidate for speaker of the Sejm is Szymon Holownia, the leader of the Poland 2050 party and a rising star in Polish politics.