With the party still languishing a poor third in opinion polls, former president Aleksander Kwaśniewski (right) wants to depose the current leader of the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD).

A source close to the post-communists has told Dziennik that Kwasniewski, who is still closely associated with the party, wants to force a leadership contest to topple chairman Grzegorz Napieralski.

 “He invites SLD MPs for coffee and tries to convince them that the left needs a change,” said an ally of  Napieralski.

Kwasniewski is thought to be encouraging Jerzy Szmajdzinski, a former defence minister, to run in next year’s presidential elections as a pretext to force a leadership contest.

Many SLD politicians expect that Napieralski will be put in the test during the Democratic Left Alliance’s party convention in December.  

Thirty five year-old Napieralsk became chairman of the party in May 2008, as the SLD tried to portray a new, younger image to the electorate.

The party had been in government in the 1990s and in the elections of 2001 won 41 percent of the vote, nationwide. But after a number of corruption scandals and charges of nepotism the party was decimated in the 2005 elections, with their share of the vote plunging to 11 percent.

After two changes of leadership, the SLD has never won back their lost support, despite their being a lack of political alternatives for Poles on the centre-left of the political spectrum in Poland. (mg/pg)