Deputy Prime Minister and Polish Peasant’s Party chairman Waldemar Pawlak has denied that his party is considering an alliance with the opposition Law and Justice party.
“This is just lies,” Pawlak, who is also Minister of Economy in the current ruling coalition, told Polish Radio this morning.
Pawlak was reacting to a report on the Wprost weekly’s web site claiming that the Polish Peasant’s Party and the Law and Justice have created an informal coalition, with the intension of weakening the senior coalition member, Civic Platform. Wprost claims that the idea originated with President Lech Kaczynski.
The Deputy Prime Minister confirmed that he met with President Kaczynski, but emphasized that the talks concerned only the situation in the economy, not any alliance. “We talked about energy policy and international relations connected with the economy,” claimed Pawlak.
PR driven PM?
Speculation about the health of the ruling coalition began in earnest this week after Pawlak’s interview with the Polish version of Newsweek, where the deputy PM criticized Civic Platform’s policy on early euro adoption and the Finance Ministry’s desire to cut public spending as a way of tackling the budget deficit and finance crisis.
Waldemar Pawlak told Newsweek that Prime Minister Donald Tusk decided that there would be no hikes in taxes in 2010 only after he had seen the opinion polls. He also criticized Civic Platform’s media bill: “Taking over public media is much more important to Civic Platform than bringing the chaos in public TV and radio to an end,” claims Pawlak.
Later, Pawlak wrote on his blog that Newsweek journalists emphasized “the parts of lesser importance” in his interview. He wrote that he actually focused mainly on privatization issues, not Donald Tusk.
In yesterday evening’s interview for the TVN24 news station, Pawlak said that there would be a meeting between Civic Platform and the Polish Peasant’s Party this week but assured that there was, “no threat to the coalition”.
Prime Minister Tusk said on Monday that the coalition was safe. He also mentioned that he, “did not think there was any risk of the coalition breaking up.”
“The fact that Waldemar Pawlak myself and have differed in various matters has been known for 20 years. Nothing has changed. I’m satisfied with the co-operation of the deputy PM,” said the prime minister. (pg/ps)