All major parties begin campaigning, Saturday, for local elections on 16 November, with the ruling Civic Platform and opposition parties Law and Justice and SLD staging rallies in Warsaw.
New prime minister Ewa Kopacz appeared at the Civic Platform convention, where Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz is bidding for a third consecutive victory in the election for mayor of Warsaw.
The centre-right Civic Platform will be hoping that the new government led by PM Kopacz – who took over as head of government after Donakd Tusk resigned to take up the position of president of the European Council in Brussels – will give them a boost at the polls next month.
A survey released on Friday by the CBOS opinion pollsters found that Civic Platform gained six percentage points in September and lead Law and Justice by 28 to 22 percent support.
The Democratic Left alliance (SLD) and junior coalition partner in the national government, the Polish Peadsants Party (PSL) were on six percent.
Ewa Kopacz said of the last seven years of government that “at some point Civic Platform drifted away from the people. We are going to fix that,” she told delegates.
Meanwhile, Law and Justice (PiS) presented candidates for local councils at Warsaw’s University of Technology, with the party convention attended by party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski told party members that Poland’s economy needs to grow by 5 percent and not the 3 percent that the government is predicting for this year.
“The economy has to grow faster than it is. We need to innovate,” the former conservative prime minister said. “We must create cooperation between science and the economy”.
The SLD/Left Together coalition of candidates are meeting at the Capital Theatre in Warsaw.
“SLD goes into the election with a program to restore the dignity of Poland outside the gates of big cities,” party leader Leszek Miller told party delegates, vowing to increase funding for smaller towns and rural areas. (pg)
source: PAP/IAR
Party leader Leszek Miller at SLD rally: photo – PAP/Tomasz Gzell
