WARSAW - Jaroslaw Kaczynski, twin brother of Poland's late president and head of the main opposition party, has gained ground on the government's candidate in the June 20 presidential race, an opinion poll showed on Monday.
Poles will choose a head of state to replace Lech Kaczynski following his death in an April 10 plane crash in Russia.
Opinion surveys have indicated Law and Justice party chief Jaroslaw Kaczynski will lose to the ruling, centrist Civic Platform party’s candidate, Bronislaw Komorowski, who has become acting president in his capacity as parliament speaker.
But a fresh poll by SMG/KRC released by the TVN 24 broadcaster showed the conservative Kaczynski on course to get 41 percent of votes in the second round, 14 percent behind the speaker and a gain of seven percent since the start of May.
A second round of voting will be held on July 4 if no candidate gets more than half of the votes on June 20.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who heads the pro-business, pro-EU Civic Platform, Poland’s most popular party, said he now believed Komorowski is unlikely to win in the first round.
Poland navigated well through the global financial crisis to emerge as the European Union’s sole member to avoid recession last year. But Tusk said the Polish economy would be at risk if Jaroslaw Kaczynski, prime minister in 2006-07, became president.
"If we lose this election we can become another destabilised country in Europe. This is threatening Greece today, maybe other states in Europe as well. Luckily not … Poland," Tusk said in an interview published by the daily Gazeta Wyborcza on Monday.
"Poland’s stability when it comes to economic issues is slowly becoming a hallmark in Europe. But we cannot forget it’s a fresh thing. We must be aware that this stability has not been given to us for ever. These elections may be a critical moment. We can lose this stability."
Kaczynski served as premier at the head of a fractious right-wing coalition that alienated business and political elites and strained relations with the EU, Germany and Russia.
After losses last week driven by investor worries over the Greek debt crisis, the Polish zloty surged on Monday along with other regional currencies following the announcement of a $1 trillion global emergency package to stabilise the euro.
