Conservatives play welfare card in Polish election

Reuters Polska ^ | 2005-09-19 | Tomasz Janowski

[lizol]

Conservatives play welfare card in Polish election 2005-09-19 18:04

By Tomasz Janowski

WARSAW, Sept 19 (Reuters) - Poland's conservatives, buoyed by increased support in opinion polls ahead of general elections on Sept. 25, accused the frontrunning centre-right Civic Platform party on Monday of caring only for the rich.

The Law and Justice (PiS) party and the Civic Platform (PO), both rooted in the Solidarity movement, were heading for a landslide win over ruling leftists whose four years in power were marred by corruption scandals. Opinion polls show the left will struggle to pass the 5 percent threshold needed to enter parliament and with the once mighty populist parties also in disarray, the election has become a race between the two would-be allies.

"Tax breaks for the better off will be paid for by the poorer part of society which will bring us closer to a Third World model," conservative leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski said of the Civic Platform's economic plans. "We will not agree to that because it clearly hurts a vast majority of society, it is immoral, ineffective economically and dangerous politically," he said. At stake is the balance of power in the next coalition and analysts say the Law and Justice party want to fill the void on the left by discrediting Civic Platform's flagship plan to introduce a flat 15 percent tax while promising a generous safety net.

"With the leftists in disarray and populists lacking credibility, PiS has taken over the left's traditional role of attacking the Platform's liberal economic agenda," Kazimierz Kik, a sociologist from Swietokrzyski University. "If they do it well, they will continue to inch up in ratings," he said.

Civic Platform defend the plan, saying it will ease the tax burden for all, help spur investment and help reduce unemployment figures, the highest in the EU. But two surveys on Sunday showed the conservatives narrowed the gap with Civic Platform by 5-8 percentage points with ratings of 27-29 percent compared with the Platform's 32-35 percent.

The Solidarity trade union last week endorsed Kaczynski's twin brother, Lech, for the Oct. 9 presidential election. Like the parliamentary race, the presidential election has become a two-party show between Kaczynski and Civic Platform's Donald Tusk.

Tusk, leads with 44-47 percent support ahead of Kaczynski, with 27-30 percent, though Kaczynski's support has risen from about 20 percent last week.

[lizol]

Ping

[Cacique]

Class envy at work. I envy the rich as well and don't particularly care for them, but I am smart enough to know that if you give the investor class tax cuts they create jobs and wealth that benefit all of society and, I might add, increases revenue for the state. It is not not because of altruism that one should support tax cuts for the productive sector, but out of pure selfishness and self interest.

Those maroons in Europe have learned nothing in the last 50 years. They look at succesfull economies and rather than emulate the factors for that success their answer is more failed socialism. It's a pity to see Poland follow that same path to failure, they learn nothing from their neighbors to the West who will be finished by the end of the century and are on the path to oblivion.

[twinself]

P&S = Patriotic & Socialist. No use at all. Won't win in Poland playing a socialist card.