POLAND:A junior party in Poland's conservative ruling coalition challenged prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski yesterday to scrap the government and call a quick parliamentary election to end weeks of political crisis.
Rancour deepened between Mr Kaczynski and two smaller allied parties after announcements that he had fired two officials - one from the left-wing Self-Defence party and one from the far-right League of Polish Families.
Self-Defence leader Andrzej Lepper, whose dismissal pushed Poland into crisis on July 9th, accused Mr Kaczynski of trying to break apart the coalition, though he stopped short of pulling his own party out.
"It's the prime minister who should come out and say the coalition no longer exists," he said.
Although neither Mr Kaczynski nor his partners seem ready to be first to abandon the coalition, the growing bitterness of their exchanges has raised questions over whether they could ever patch up relations.
Mr Lepper said the Self-Defence party still refused to bow to Mr Kaczynski's demand that it drop its call for an investigation of an anti-corruption commission, whose inquiry led to his sacking.
Poland's economy has boomed under Mr Kaczynski and his twin brother Lech, who is president, but they have failed to stop political infighting and earned a reputation as troublemakers in the EU.
Opinion polls show that holding elections now would not be in the interest of any of the coalition parties. - ( Reuters)