Solidarity offshoots set for carve-up as Socialists pay the price

Polish election: Right-wing offshoots from Poland's Solidarity movement are set to rout the ruling Socialists in a general election on Sunday, but opinion polls showed yesterday that the battle to be the biggest party in parliament was far from over.

After winning the endorsement of the surviving Solidarity trade union and apparently that of Poland's powerful Catholic Church, the Law and Justice party closed to within 5 per cent of Civic Platform, which led the way on a predicted 32 per cent.

The survey, for Poland's leading daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, had the incumbent Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) trailing in a distant fifth place, behind the strongly Catholic League of Polish Families and populist Self Defence party.

Unemployment of about 18 per cent, a string of lurid sleaze scandals and perpetual infighting have crippled the SLD, who led Poland into Nato and the European Union, but is braced for a trouncing on Sunday and in presidential polls next month.

Perhaps its last hope of a reprieve evaporated last week, when arguably the left's most popular politician, parliamentary speaker Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, was forced to withdraw from the presidential race amid allegations of insider dealing.

According to polls, much of his support transferred to Lech Kaczynski, a leader of the Law and Justice Party, who is running second in pre-presidential election surveys behind Donald Tusk, the candidate for Civic Platform.

It was one of several timely boosts for Mr Kaczynski, the tough-talking mayor of Warsaw, ahead of this week's general election and the October 9th presidential vote.

On Sunday, the Law and Justice Party candidate heard Poland's hugely influential Catholic Church give him and his allies a thinly disguised election endorsement.

"Let us make a wise choice. Let law mean law and justice mean justice," declared Bishop Jozef Zawitkowski during a Mass broadcast on state-run radio and television.

It was held to mark 25 years since Poland's communist government lifted a ban on the live broadcast of Mass, amid a wave of pro-democracy agitation led by the Solidarity movement.

Mr Kaczynski and his twin brother Jaroslaw, the leaders of Law and Justice, were Solidarity activists, and they have vied with Civic Platform to portray themselves as the spiritual heirs of Solidarity's campaign for social justice.

Though the two parties have suggested they will work together in a coalition, Mr Kaczynski has spiced up his presidential bid in recent days by calling Civic Platform a friend to big business rather than the poor.

"We now have two clear visions of Poland," Mr Kaczynski said. "We have a vision of Poland based on solidarity and the rule of co-operation . . . and we have a vision of liberal Poland based on the force of human egoism."

After the disappointing showing of his ideological ally, Angela Merkel, in Germany's election, Mr Tusk has urged Civic Platform to take nothing for granted. "Mood swings still await us and until the last hour we will not know who has won," he cautioned.