The head of Poland’s electoral commission has voiced his strongest criticism so far over plans by the Polish government to hold scheduled presidential elections next week. Such a vote would be impossible, he says, and suggests that a state of emergency should be declared to delay the election.
The ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has been pushing ahead with organising an all-postal vote on 10 May, tasking the post office which much of the preparations. However, the legislation making such an election possible still has not been passed, and may not be until 6 May.
The bill may not even pass at all, with uncertainty over whether PiS can command a parliamentary majority following a rebellion against the May election by the leader of one of its coalition partners, Jarosław Gowin. Opposition parties also point out that it is illegal to begin organising the vote before the relevant law is passed, and many local authorities have refused to cooperate.
“I believe that, due to the legal and organisational conditions, it is not possible to hold elections on 10 May,” said Sylwester Marciniak, head of the National Electoral Commission (PKW), in an interview with Rzeczpospolita. “With everyone’s cooperation, elections could be held at a later date.”
“We have less than a week until 10 May, and the legal status [of the election] is not established,” said Marciniak in a separate interview with Dziennik Gazeta Prawna. “Certain powers of the PKW have been suspended and the bill on postal voting is still in the Senate. There would have to be a miracle for [elections] to be held.”
PiS’s postal-voting legislation would allow for the election to be delayed until 23 May, to give more time for organisation. Marciniak, however, indicated that he favours an even longer delay.
“We have never had a situation where an election is postponed,” he told Dziennik Gazeta Prawna. “There are various constitutional solutions, [but] the easiest would be to introduce a state of natural disaster.”
The constitution empowers the government to declare such an emergency state, which would automatically delay elections, meaning they could be held in August at the earliest. The main opposition group has proposed using this method to postpone the vote by a year.
However, PiS argues that such a step would be unnecessary, unjustified and would also require the state to make crippling compensation payments.
An alternative would be to amend the constitution. Gowin, who resigned as deputy prime minister in protest against the election, has suggested this. His proposal would extend incumbent President Andrzej Duda’s term by two years, but not allow him to stand again in 2022.
PiS has backed the idea. But changing the constitution would also require support from a significant section of the opposition, which has not been forthcoming.
Gowin has been in talks with various opposition leaders, hoping to broker a compromise but also stoking rumours that there is an attempt underway to create a parliamentary majority against PiS’s postal-election legislation this week and possibly even to seek to remove the party from power.
Main image credit: Maciek Jazwiecki/Agencja Gazeta
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
