WARSAW, July 6 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Donald Tusk promised on Tuesday to work closely with Bronislaw Komorowski to reform Poland after Komorowski officially becomes president next month.
Tusk’s market-oriented government had poor relations with Komorowski’s predecessor, Lech Kaczynski, who vetoed several bills before his death in a plane crash in April.
Komorowski beat Kaczynski’s identical twin brother Jaroslaw in Sunday’s presidential election.
"We understand this victory (for Komorowski) as a great obligation," Tusk said at a lavish state ceremony in Warsaw’s former royal palace where Komorowski received from the election commission the official document confirming his victory.
"This is a very important day for Poland, a new opening for me and the government. I promise to work hard and to cooperate closely with President Komorowski to build a better Poland." Komorowski, the speaker of the lower house of parliament, was the candidate of Tusk’s ruling Civic Platform party, though he said on Tuesday he would now renounce his party membership and be the president of all Poles.
In Poland, the government sets policy, but the president can propose and veto laws, has a say in foreign and security issues and appoints state officials. Lech Kaczynski upset Tusk several times by blocking government legislation.
Komorowski’s win puts pressure on Tusk to reform Poland’s battered public finances because he no longer faces the threat of a presidential veto.
But analysts say the government is unlikely to risk painful fiscal cuts that could trigger protests and strikes during the countdown to parliamentary election set for autumn 2011.
INAUGURATION IN AUGUST
Komorowski, a gently-spoken moderate conservative, stressed the need for consensus and dialogue, noting his presidential bid had drawn the support of two predecessors, Lech Walesa and Aleksander Kwasniewski, men from different political parties.
Komorowski formally assumes his duties as head of state after a swearing-in ceremony likely to be held on Aug. 7.
This week, he will resign his post of speaker of the lower house Sejm and that of acting president, a job he automatically took up on Lech Kaczynski’s death.
Komorowski won 53 percent of the vote against Kaczynski’s 47 percent in Sunday’s election run-off on turnout of 55 percent.
His election ended an extraordinary period in Polish politics following the plane crash in Russia that killed many top state officials as well as the president.
It has also consolidated the domination of Polish politics by Tusk and his pro-euro, pro-business party.
But Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s stronger-than-expected showing on Sunday has reinvigorated his party, the conservative-nationalist Law and Justice, ahead of local polls due this autumn and next year’s parliamentary election.
