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Poland’s opposition leader Donald Tusk and his Civic Platform party alongside two smaller partners have won a combined 248 of the 460 seats in the next parliament, according to the country’s final election results, giving him a path to form a coalition government.
The ruling rightwing Law and Justice (PiS) led by Jarosław Kaczyński remains the biggest party in the lower house of parliament, or Sejm, with 194 seats, according to the results released on Tuesday. But an alliance with the far-right Confederation party, which won 18 seats, would not be enough for a majority.
President Andrzej Duda is expected to give PiS as the largest party the first chance to form a government when parliament convenes in the next 30 days. But if PiS fails to muster sufficient support, the baton is then set to be handed over to Tusk, who could get parliament to vote his government into office in December.
Tusk, who served as prime minister from 2007 to 2014, is set for a stunning comeback to power, having taken back control of his party in 2021 after five years spent in Brussels as president of the European Council.
The opposition presented Sunday’s election as a last chance to salvage democracy in the largest EU member state in central and eastern Europe and stop a slide towards authoritarianism and an eroding rule of law.
PiS, however, claimed Poland was facing a struggle to preserve national sovereignty with Tusk acting as a stooge for Brussels, Berlin and even Moscow. But Tusk claimed Kaczyński, with whom he has been feuding for two decades, was modelling a future regime on that of the Kremlin.
Tusk, 66, has promised to reposition Warsaw on a pro-European path, restore the independence of judges and unlock billions of euros of EU funding that was withheld by the European Commission in a feud with the PiS-led government over judicial reforms.
Voters responded by flocking to the ballot box — a turnout of 74.4 per cent was the largest since Poland’s return to democracy.
The government transition should be relatively “smooth and unproblematic, but not very fast”, said Wojciech Szacki, head of the political desk at think-tank Polityka Insight.
Szacki said “there might be quarrels and fights” during the coalition talks, “but I don’t think anything can change the outcome of this process and I think we will see a new Donald Tusk government before the end of the year”.
Tusk is expected to share power with two parties that performed better than expected, particularly the Third Way alliance of centrist and agrarian parties that won 65 seats. The leftist Lewica party, which will be the junior coalition partner, got 26 seats.
The combined seats won by the opposition grouping matched exactly the forecast in the exit poll released on Sunday, when Tusk already declared victory, saying “this is the end of bad times, this is the end of PiS rule”.
The three opposition parties will also control the upper chamber of parliament, the Senate, with 65 of the 100 seats.