POLISH BUDGET ROW HIGHLIGHTS GOVERNING PARTY'S

UNCLAS WARSAW 000053 SIPDIS SENSITIVE E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV PREL PL SUBJECT: POLISH BUDGET ROW HIGHLIGHTS GOVERNING PARTY'S SHIFTING TACTICS ¶1. (SBU) Poland's Law and Justice (PiS) minority government set off an uproar January 11 among opposition parliamentary groups, including those supporting the government, when it backed off from scheduling a budget vote this weekend, reviving suspicions that PiS plans to use a budget delay to call early elections. The parliamentary session was delayed throughout the following day, as the party leaders met to resolve the issue. Late January 12, Polish media were broadcasting unconfirmed reports that the leadership had agreed to an extraordinary two-week break, suspending the session until January 25, but parliamentarians were apparently still working behind the scenes. These somewhat chaotic developments in parliament stem from the governing party's contradictory signals concerning its political intentions, as PiS weighs and hints at possible coalition options and early elections. ¶2. (SBU) Government parliamentary allies Self-Defense and LPR, whose poll numbers have fallen dramatically in the past months, are particularly keen to avoid new elections and have already resumed their effort to forge some kind of formal coalition with PiS. Meanwhile, centrist PO leader Donald Tusk met with PiS party leaders Jaroslaw Kaczynski January 12, in an unusually friendly meeting aimed at a possible rapprochement between the two largest parties. Kaczynski afterwards dismissed talk of early elections as a media creation, ignoring his statement the previous day in which he outlined a choice between a formal coalition and new elections. ¶3. (SBU) Comment: It is difficult to imagine the parliament taking a two-week recess in the midst of its budget debate, but such a thing cannot be excluded given the lively and unpredictable course of Polish politics in recent months. The current parliamentary debate underscores the tremendous challenge facing PiS as a minority government and the need to set a clear political course. Whether aimed at forcing new elections in April (if the budget is not approved by mid-February, President Lech Kaczynski is empowered constitutionally to call elections without the approval of parliament) or simply using that threat to force a coalition, PiS's current tactics cannot be sustained for long. ASHE