WARSAW, July 5 (Reuters) - Moderate conservative Bronislaw Komorowski has narrowly won Poland's presidential election, raising pressure on the government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk to deliver on economic reforms.
Komorowski won 52.6 percent of the vote in Sunday’s poll, according to results based on 95 percent of the ballots, after a cliffhanger vote that saw his right-wing rival Jaroslaw Kaczynski perform much better than expected.
Kaczynski, who heads the main right-wing opposition party and was vying to succeed his twin brother Lech whose death in a plane crash in April precipitated Sunday’s vote, scored 47.4 percent.
Because Komorowski is a member of Tusk’s ruling Civic Platform (PO), the government no longer has to worry about the risk of presidential vetoes of its legislation and should be freer to pursue fiscal plans, including a rule to limit government spending.
But analysts said the unexpected tightness of the presidential race, the prospect of looming local elections and a parliamentary vote due in 2011 could lead Tusk to take a cautious approach.
"(Komorowski’s win is) market positive," Goldman Sachs said in its note to clients. "However, these reforms look increasingly unlikely to happen quickly as local and parliamentary elections are approaching."
In Poland, the government sets policy, but the president can propose and veto laws, appoint key state officials and has a say in foreign and security issues. Lech Kaczynski had vetoed a number of Tusk’s bills before his death.
"You have all the power now. Show us what you can do," Poland’s top-selling daily Fakt said on its front page, referring to Tusk’s PO.
Other newspapers urged PO to deliver on promised reforms, with the Gazeta Wyborcza daily saying Tusk would lose next year’s parliamentary election if he failed to do so.
The European Union’s largest ex-communist member was the only economy in the 27-nation bloc to avoid recession last year, but a sharp slowdown has hammered tax revenues and driven up the budget deficit to 7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).
Public debt, though low by west European standards, is creeping towards the 55 percent of GDP threshold which, if breached, would by law trigger painful spending cuts.
On Sunday night Tusk vowed to push ahead with his plans to introduce an anchor on public spending. His finance minister, Jacek Rostowski, said a cautious 2011 budget was now crucial.
"We want to spend money in a reasonable way and this will require the support of politicians and citizens. I will ask my political partners and the parliament to help impose some discipline in our public finances," Tusk told reporters.
Despite overcoming the risk of a presidential veto, PO faces other hurdles in the way of reforms. It is locked in a coalition with the small Peasants’ Party which is opposed to any attack on the pension privileges of farmers and other occupational groups.
Komorowski, a gently-spoken father of five grown-up children, will be Poland’s fourth democratically elected president since the fall of communism 1989.
His election to a five-year term will be welcomed in other EU capitals and in Moscow because Komorowski backs Tusk’s efforts to improve foreign ties that came under strain during Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s short stint as prime minister in 2006-7.
"Komorowski’s win bodes well for Poland in Europe. His presidency will enable Poland to integrate with the European Union," said Kazimierz Kik of Kielce University.
Conceding defeat on Sunday evening, Kaczynski told supporters his good result in the election boded well for local elections in the autumn and next year’s parliamentary poll, which Poland will hold during its rotating European Union’s presidency. "We have to win them and we will," he said.
