Poland:Poland's coalition government was on life support for the second time in a month last night, with each of the three political party leaders demanding the other pull the plug.
Prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski cut short his holiday yesterday to demand that junior coalition partner Self Defence withdraw its two ministers from office. Self Defence leader Andrzej Lepper responded by demanding that the prime minister dismiss them.
The three-way coalition that has scarcely agreed on anything since taking office last September is apparently unable to agree on how to end it all.
The beginning of the end came a month ago when Mr Kaczynski fired Mr Lepper as deputy prime minister and minister for agriculture after alleged involvement in a bribery scandal by the anti-corruption bureau .
Mr Lepper denied the charge that he was involved in rezoning land for bribes and announced he was leaving government. His party refused to follow and instead announced an electoral alliance with the third coalition partner, the League of Polish Families. The two parties have little ideological common ground but, according to opinion polls are equally unlikely to clear the 5 per cent parliamentary hurdle if they face a snap election alone.
If the government falls now, Mr Kaczynski could attempt another minority coalition like the one that ruled Poland for almost a year after elections in 2005. He could also try for a new coalition with the liberal Civic Platform, the largest opposition party. But with an eight-point lead in the polls, Civic Platform politicians are impatient to hit the campaign trail.
If forced to the polls, Mr Kaczynski can show voters that, despite the political instability, the Polish economy has continued to power ahead with unemployment dropping, and 6.4 per cent growth expected this year. But he could face difficulty over his government's record on European and transatlantic relations.
Poles reacted bitterly to the weekend news that the US is abolishing visa requirements for Czechs and Estonians but not for Poles. They resent having to apply for visas to visit relatives in the US. A history of emigration as long as Ireland's has resulted in a 10 million-strong Polish-American community centred in Chicago.
For years Warsaw politicians have played on that resentment, by using the promise of abolishing the visa requirement to justify unpopular policies.
"Isn't it enough that we are American footstools?" complained Jerzy in an internet forum yesterday. "We send soldiers wherever Americans want them. We want to install American missiles in Poland without any conditions. We couldn't have buttered up Americans more, and they still want us to apply for visas."
Mr Kaczynski denied it was a policy failure for his government.Poland had not met all criteria for visa-free travel, he said, in particular the requirement to reduce the number of nationals overstaying the duration of their visas. "Poles are still not coming back from the US on time and we're all paying for this," he said.