WARSAW. SEPTEMBER 26. INTERFAX CENTRAL EUROPE - Poland's pro-market opposition party Civic Platform (PO) Tuesday filed a motion for self-dissolution of Parliament, party leaders told a televised press conference.
"In accordance with a public announcement, Civic Platform, represented by [deputy] Speaker Bronislaw Komorowski, filed a motion for self-dissolution of Parliament," PO leader Donald Tusk said. "As the recent days have shown, attempts to scrape together a parliamentary majority with MPs thrown out of other parties are doomed to failure."
PO's motion has little hope of success if the governing Law and Justice (PiS) refuses to vote in favor. The motion requires a two-thirds majority in the Sejm, or the lower chamber of Parliament, and PiS's 154 parliamentarians account for just more than a third of the 460-seat Sejm.
The motion comes amid frenetic attempts to build a majority coalition to support the government. In addition to PiS, the government can already count on the support of 29 parliamentarians from the far-right League of Polish Families (LPR), as well as 15 splinters from other parties, grouped in the so-called National-Popular Movement (RLN), founded Friday.
The government is also wooing the moderate agrarian Polish People's Party (PSL), which has 25 votes in Sejm. Should the peasant party join the coalition, the government would get the support of 223 votes in the Sejm, just eight short of a majority, meaning further defections will be required.
The government lost the majority after Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski last week sacked Andrzej Lepper, vice-premier and minister of agriculture. The move meant Lepper's party, the populist Samoobrona (Self-Defense) left the coalition. Since then, eight Samoobrona MPs have defected to the coalition and formed the RNL.