POLAND: Speculation over the future of Polish prime minister Marek Belka was fuelled further yesterday, when a founder of the country's fledgling Democratic Party claimed the premier would resign on May 5th and immediately join the new bloc.
President Alexander Kwasniewski swiftly retorted that he would not accept Mr Belka's resignation until the middle of May at the earliest, a move that could increase pressure on Mr Kwasniewski's struggling left-wing allies and trigger early elections.
"Prime minister Marek Belka will join the Democratic Party on May 5th," said one of its key members, Wladyslaw Frasyniuk.
"I also hope the prime minister will be able to convince the president to have elections in June and to accept the prime minister's resignation. I think that we should have this confirmed by the president before May 5th."
But Mr Kwasniewski, who has seen support for the ruling Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) wither amid a string of corruption scandals, said he wanted Mr Belka to be at his post at least until after a major international meeting in Warsaw on May 16th-17th.
"I will not accept the resignation of prime minister Marek Belka until the end of the Council of Europe summit," Mr Kwasniewski said, suggesting he had shifted his position from last week, when an aide said the president would reject his premier's resignation outright to avoid potential "political chaos".
Mr Belka's resignation, if accepted, could cast the new European Union member into months of political limbo, as the SLD is now too weak in parliament to appoint a new premier.
He seems determined to quit on May 5th, the day parliament decides whether to dissolve itself, having become increasingly frustrated with the SLD's stalling over his fiscal reforms and its failure to climb out of a deepening mire of sleaze.
Mr Belka's possible defection to the Democratic Party, which already counts ex-president Tadeusz Mazowiecki and former economy minister Jerzy Hausner among its members, has made things even more complicated.
"It would certainly make it more difficult for Kwasniewski to reject his resignation," said Prof Andrzej Rychard from the Polish Academy of Science. "It is hard to imagine a prime minister who is a member of an opposition party."
While Mr Belka has already spoken in favour of elections on June 19th, most of his erstwhile SLD colleagues want parliament to run to the end of its term in September, perhaps pushing the polls back to coincide with a planned referendum on the EU constitution that is expected this autumn.
Mr Belka has urged the SLD to accept early elections as a way of breaking the impasse in parliament, and giving itself time to regroup and field a strong candidate in presidential elections that are also due by October.
Mr Kwasniewski is constitutionally barred from running again but, as a former SLD leader and Poland's most popular left-wing leader, he wants the socialists to recover from their slump before going into general elections that the rejuvenated right looks set to win. The SLD fears a rout at the polls, with the conservative Civic Platform and staunchly right-wing Law and Order Party poised to benefit. Both have strong reservations about the EU constitution, as does the Catholic League of Polish Families.
But the Democratic Party, with its centrist stance and an increasingly strong line-up, could short-circuit the right's bid to exploit voter disillusionment with scandals and high unemployment, which the former communists at the SLD seem unable to combat.
"Many ordinary Poles have grown tired or bored of continuous political battles, and the Democrats' moderate approach could score them points," Grzegorz Sygnowski, a sociologist at polling agency Ipsos-Demoskop, said.