Bronislaw Komorowski (left) and Radoslaw Sikorski, photo: East NewsThe Civic Platform has officially announced that Speaker of Parliament Bronisław Komorowski has won the party’s preliminaries and will stand as a candidate for the presidential elections this autumn. Bronisław Komorowski bested Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski 68.1% to 31.5 %.
Turnout was 47.47%. The preliminaries were announced by Prime Minister Donald Tusk in February. Out of near on 46 thousand Civic Platform members, 21 thousand voted (almost 17 thousand over the internet and a little over 4 thousand by post).
Speaking after his election, Bronisław Komorowski thanked his rival, saying “I love you, Radek” and his voters, and promised that he was now obliged to even greater effort. Radosław Sikorski responded saying he had voted for the Parliamentary Speaker.
In his address, PM Donald Tusk said the campaign would change Polish politics because “There are political parties in Poland and in the world where decisions are made by one person. There are parties where the decisions are made by two… Today we have shown Poles that there is a political formation where key decisions are taken by more than twenty thousand”.
Organization of the preliminaries cost the Civic Platform half a million zloty but this is considered money well spent as the campaign engrossed media attention in Poland. The announcement of the results was held in grand convention style in Warsaw, with the winner read out by president of Warsaw Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz and multimedial presentations of voting results from the regions. (ek)