POLAND: Poland's new prime minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, is facing a revolt by a coalition partner a day after he took office on Tuesday and ahead of a parliamentary vote on his new government.
The left-wing populist Self Defence party wants to renegotiate the coalition agreement it signed in May with Mr Kaczynski's right-wing Law and Justice Party (PiS) and the extreme-right League of Polish Families.
"We hope that this will happen, but if not we will treat it as a provocation and will vote against the new government," said Janusz Maksymiuk of Self Defence yesterday.
The upcoming government vote comes after prime minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz was forced to resign last week and was replaced by the man who appointed him, PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski.
Polish newspapers have tried this week to fill in the many blanks in the biography of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, a teetotal bachelor who lives with his mother and several cats. He has successfully sued a newspaper for saying he was homosexual.
"He once had a girlfriend and thought about having a family," noted one tabloid this week. "But he realised that the most important thing for him was working for the anti-communist opposition."
Appointed prime minister on Monday by his twin brother and president, Lech, Jaroslaw Kaczynski takes office after months of political chaos in Warsaw that has left Poland's voters, not to mention its EU neighbours, puzzled at best and alienated at worst.
The Kaczynski twins, former child stars and anti-communist campaigners, are Poland's unique contribution to political science.
They founded their own political party and won last year's presidential and parliamentary elections by promising to eradicate the blight of corruption and cronyism stemming from Poland's mixed record in dealing with its communist past.
"The Kaczynskis understand very well that what brought down the last two governments was corruption. As long as they remain corruption-free, PiS will stay in power," says Piotr Kaczynski (no relation), an analyst at the Institute of Public Affairs in Warsaw.
Discussions of the Kaczynskis' political style with a wide variety of people throw up surprisingly similar observations.
Many see a shyness and insecurity behind the general suspicion of those outside their political circle and outside Poland, and their emotional, attack-driven political style directed at perceived opponents and critics.
"Their modus operandi is, 'If you're not with us you're against us'.
"That's a good way to win elections, but no way to run a country," said Jaroslaw Walesa, MP for the opposition Civic Platform and son of Solidarity leader Lech Walesa.
In recent days president Lech Kaczynski has been widely criticised - even by the departing Polish ambassador in Berlin - for over-reacting to a German newspaper article describing the twins as "Polish potatoes". He pulled out of a summit with the French and German leaders, citing "digestive complaints".
That fed into the most common complaint heard in Warsaw political circles these days: a perceived lack of understanding - or interest - of where Poland is going on foreign policy.
Last week every Polish foreign minister from 1989 until the present signed an open letter complaining about precisely this, a move Jaroslaw Kaczynski described as a "disgrace".
Inside the PiS camp, though, things look very different.
Asked about strained relations with European neighbours, PiS politicians say it is Poland's neighbours who haven't tried to understand Polish society and politics, rather than the other way around.
"We will be more assertive in openly presenting our point of view. This is the Polish way of foreign policy," said Pawel Zalewski of PiS and chairman of the parliamentary foreign affairs committee.
He says the new government is anxious to reopen the constitutional treaty, in particular the voting rules, and is coming around to the idea of a common European security and defence policy.
"We won't be told that there is no nationalist policy in Europe because clearly our partners follow this style of policy," said Jaroslaw Kaczynski in a magazine interview ahead of his first policy speech tomorrow.