The national board of the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) is to meet today to decide who they will put up for candidate in the presidential elections scheduled for June 20.

The party has had to find a replacement for Jerzy Szmajdzinski, who died in the Smolensk air disaster on April 10. The two most frequently named to replace him are MP Ryszard Kalisz and MEP Marek Siwiec, though SLD leader Grzegorz Napieralski and President of Krakow Jacek Majchrowski are also thought to have been considered.

“These names are the result of media speculation and I do not want to comment further,” said party spokesman Tomasz Kalita.

TVP public television says that it has been told by sources inside the party that Marek Siwiec will be chosen as candidate, in an election brought forward from September this year in the wake of the plane crash in western Russia which killed 96, including incumbent president Lech Kaczynski.

Siwiec worked closely with Aleksander Kwasniewski when he was president of Poland from the mid 1990s till 2005. He was appointed as chief of the National Security Bureau. In 2004 he was elected to the European Parliament and retained his seat in last year’s elections.

Waldemar Pawlak, who was chosen this week as candidate for the Polish Peasant’s Party (PSL) said he would out forward his party’s policy agenda for the elections next week, after all the funerals of the April 10 air crash are over. Pawlak, a former prime minister of Poland, said the election campaign should be conducted in “a dignified manner in keeping with the time and mood.”

Law and Justice are to meet at the weekend to decide who should replace Lech Kaczynski as candidate - the overwhelming favourite being the late president’s twin brother Jaroslaw.

The clear leader in opinion polls over all possible candidates is acting president Bronislaw Komorowski, the Civic Platform candidate. (pg)

Source: PAP