Poland's right-wing ruler wins four more years.
The 70-year old Jaroslaw Kaczynski's conservative vision of Poland proved popular with voters.
BRUSSELS, TODAY, 09:19
Poland's conservative ruling party has won four more years in office, beating a pro-European coalition into second place."We have victory. Despite a powerful [opposition] front, we managed to win", the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party's chief, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who is widely seen as the country's de facto leader, announced on Sunday (13 October)."We are finishing a certain stage: we are starting a new one. It is not easier, maybe more difficult. But I hope that it will be finished with even greater success," he added.The PiS party "had a real plan ... for courts to stop being the ball and chain of the Polish economy," Zbigniew Ziobro, the PiS justice minister, said.PiS won the elections to the lower house with 43.6 percent of votes, giving it an outright majority of 239 seats out of 260 under Poland's electoral rules.It also won 46.2 percent of votes in the upper house, amid a high turnout of more than 60 percent.Kaczynski's mention of a "certain stage" of reform alluded to PiS' overhaul of the Polish judicial system.The comments by Ziobro, the main enforcer of those reforms, were more explicit in saying they would continue.That augured badly for EU relations after the European Commission launched a sanctions procedure against Poland some two years ago, saying the changes were designed to make judges into PiS' political servants, undermining the independence of the courts.PiS also attacked "liberal elites" in its campaign and promised to spend more on welfare.And it hammered Poland's pro-LGBTI movement as a form of nefarious foreign influence in another assault on mainstream EU values.The Civic Coalition (KO), a bloc of three centre-right and pro-EU parties, came second with 27.4 percent in the lower house and 33.2 percent in the senate.
