POLAND: Months of Polish political chaos descended further into farce last night as politicians squabbled over whether or not they had missed a budget deadline in parliament and now face a general election in March - six months after the last.
The confusion could also plunge Poland into a constitutional crisis after opposition politicians threatened yesterday to impeach the president if he dissolves parliament.
The budget row is the culmination of the political turmoil that began when the centre-right Law and Justice Party (PiS) failed to turn their election victory in September into a majority coalition government.
The row flared further yesterday when a spokesman for the upper house, the senate, said a four-month deadline to finish passing the budget, first submitted on September 30th by the last parliament, had expired.
The constitution says a maximum of four months can pass from the start of the budget's legislative journey to the time it lands on the president's desk.
In that case, President Lech Kaczynski would have 14 days from today to decide whether or not to dissolve parliament and call fresh elections.
But opposition parties and leading constitution lawyers say the deadline will pass next month, because the PiS minority government revised the budget on October 19th.
They accuse PiS of using the prospect of fresh elections as a threat.
The most recent opinion poll shows PiS leading with 35 per cent of the vote, four points ahead of the liberal Civic Platform (PO), with several smaller parties struggling to pass the five per cent parliamentary hurdle.
But the political situation is volatile and a poll last week gave the PO a one-point lead over PiS.
The political chaos began last September when PiS overtook the PO at the last minute to win the general election. After coalition negotiations with the PO broke down, PiS formed a minority government headed by Prime Minister Kamzimerz Marcinkiewicz.
In the last months, PiS has flirted with the extreme conservative League of Polish Families and the left-wing populist Self Defence party. Then Mr Marcinkiewicz reopened coalition talks with the PO, which failed again.
Janina Paradowska, the political commentator of Politkya magazine, has written: "Politics has been deprived of a deeper sense and everything has just become manipulation, games and cheating on a scale that has never been experienced in the last 15 years."