MEP Zbigniew Ziobro – leader of the radical hardliners? Photo: prsteam.net

Two MEPs from the Law and Justice party have got involved in a struggle between moderates and radicals for the future direction of the opposition party, following leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s defeat in July’s presidential election.

The split in the party became evident after MEP Marek Migalski wrote an open letter to party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski on his blog, blaming him for the party’s poor opinion poll ratings and warning that Law and Justice’s current strategy will lead to failure in the upcoming local elections in the autumn, as well as the general elections in 2011.

Marek Migalski wrote that Jaroslaw, the twin brother of the late Lech Kaczynski and co-founder of the party, is their greatest asset but also their greatest burden. “Without you we won’t survive, [yet] with you we won’t win,” he wrote.

Migalksi criticised a return to a more aggressive style of politics since the end of Kaczynski’s presidential election campaign, during which he presented a more conciliatory face to voters.

Migalski’s open letter was well received by what has emerged as a more moderate, younger face of Law and Justice, including Joanna Kluzik-Rostkowska and Pawel Poncyliusz - who ran Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s presidential campaign, in which they strove to recast Kaczynski’s obstinate radical image and present him as a consensus politician.

“I hope that no one will get offended by the letter and it will give an incentive to a serious debate about the future of the party,” said Kluzik-Rostkowska.

“In the Law and Justice party there are people like me, who think that the we can succeed if we adopt a milder tone,” said Pawel Poncyliusz.

In his letter, Migalski accused Jaroslaw Kaczynski of casting Poncyliusz and Kluzik-Rostkowska aside in spite of their achievements during what was thought to be a successful presidential campaign.

Moderates versus radicals

While the more moderate fraction is trying to gain influence within the party, some Law and Justice MPs claim that the real threat to unity may come from the ‘radical’ fraction, lead by former justice minister and now MEP Zbigniew Ziobro. Ziobro is thought to have advised Kaczynski to step up the rhetoric surrounding the investigation into the Smolensk plane disaster, which killed Lech Kaczynski in April.

Immediately after his election defeat, Kaczynski went on the offensive over who was to blame for the plane crash, telling the Law and Justice party web site that, “There is a thin line between an accident and murder,” implying that Russia had not given sufficient information to the pilots of the doomed TU 154 about whether conditions and readiness of the military airport near Smolensk, western Russia, to receive the aircraft.

“Ziobro has a cunning plan: to push Jaroslaw Kaczynski further into radicalism, which will only worsen the party’s ratings,” one unnamed member of the Law and Justice party reportedly told the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.

Recent opinion polls show Law and Justice continuing to trail the ruling Civic Platform by some margin, with one poll suggesting the opposition party actually losing ground during a period when the government had announced tax hikes.

“When the ratings reach only a dozen or so percent, the party will start collapsing and then Ziobro will either seize power or form a new party,” the politician added.

Law and Justice have been out of power since losing the general election in 2007. Since then they have lost European parliamentary elections, a presidential election and continue to languish In opinion polls, three years into the government’s term of office, when opposition parties should be doing well.  (pg/mg)