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Election 2011: Don't side with sabre-rattler says PM Tusk

PR dla Zagranicy
Peter Gentle 07.10.2011 07:41
Prime Minister Donald Tusk focused squarely on his main adversary, Law and Justice leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, in a key interview on Thursday before Sunday’s election, claiming that Poland risked falling into “idiotic wars” if the opposition party got into power.

Donald
Donald Tusk; photo - PAP/Radek Pietruszka

“I will not allow Poland to get into some idiotic wars,” Tusk said in a joint interview given simultaneously on both private and public TV stations that was effectively a last appeal to voters ahead of the 9 October parliamentary elections in Poland.

“With absolute certainly, [leader of opposition party Law and Justice] Jaroslaw Kaczynski will guarantee you exceptional cavalry charges against everyone, “ Tusk said.

“Only I am responsible, however, for making sure that people earn money, find work, and can do business with their neighbours, because there is opportunity in the Polish economy,” he said, emphasizing that in the last four years of the Civic Platform/Polish Peasant Party coalition, Poland’s economy has been in better shape than most in the EU, as the finance crisis brings economies like Greece to its knees.

Tusk invited voters to see him as “an expert” in “negotiating with neighbours and members of the European Union, [done so] on the basis of compromise,” where as former prime minister Kaczynski would not achieve anything by “getting on a horse and waving a sabre, provoking everyone.”

The prime minister warned against the kind of patriotism favoured by Kaczynski, that amounts to “the white and red national flag flying over a heap of rubble,” continuing the negative campaigning in the last few days that has been a feature of both sides in the battle to become the largest party in Poland’s lower house of parliament, the Sejm.

In response to Kaczynski's plea to voters this week that they should not vote for Tusk's party, Civic Platform, because this risked a coalition with the anti-clerical, liberal party, the Palikot Movement, , Tusk appeared anxious to counter the suggestion.

Tusk said that he “would not cooperate with a man who wants to legalise drugs,” adding he was not thinking about coalitions but only about an outright win for his centre-right party.

Friday is the last day that politicians are legally entitled to campaign prior to Sunday's election. (nh/pg)

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