POLAND: Poland's parliamentary speaker, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, has withdrawn from next month's presidential election - an election he once looked certain to win - after denying accusations of insider share dealing.
Mr Cimoszewicz entered the race to succeed President Aleksander Kwasniewski as a non-partisan candidate, though with the backing of the ruling Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) and with first lady Jolanta Kwasniewska as his campaign manager.
"I am pulling out in protest at a dirty campaign of defamation of which my family and I have been victims," said Mr Cimoszewicz, at a press conference in Warsaw yesterday.
He has denied buying and selling later at a profit shares in state-controlled oil company Orlen shortly before the arrest of the chairman sent the share price tumbling. The arrest later proved to be unwarranted but was apparently discussed by the cabinet, of which Mr Cimoszewicz was a member. "I invested 38,000 zlotys, and when I sold my stake, I incurred a loss of 14,000 zlotys," he said, accusing his political opponents of "black propaganda".
Mr Cimoszewicz (55), is a moderate leftist and one of Poland's most experienced politicians, having served as interior and justice minister and twice as foreign minister in the last decade.
He ran for president once before, in 1990, but attracted just 10 per cent of the vote. In recent days his support had fallen to 18 per cent, behind the conservative mayor of Warsaw, Lech Kaczynski, co-founder of the Law and Justice Party, and the leading candidate, Donald Tusk, head of the liberal Civic Platform.
Mr Cimoszewicz's withdrawal from the presidency race is the latest scandal to emerge from a series of highly politicised inquiries into privatisation corruption, which have also implicated Irish company CRH.
