Jaroslaw Kaczynski, former PM, failed in his bid to win the presidency that was vacated by the death of his twin brother, Lech, earlier this year.
The winner of the close contest, Bronislaw Komorowski, is from the party of the current premier, Civic Platform.
Aside from sympathy over the death of his brother, one source of support for Kaczynski was a desire to balance the control of the country’s dual executive structure.* But instead, Poland will now begin a new phase of unified government.
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* According to some news coverage I saw over the past week while traveling in Europe, Kaczynski explicitly employed this theme of “balance” in the campaign.
That was actually the case that Kaczynski talked about not giving the full control of the country to Civic Platform. Interestingly enough, the Law and Justice Party (party of Kaczynski) controlled both the legislature and the office of president from fall 2005 to fall 2007. And from July 2006 to November 2007 twins held the positions of president and prime minister, so it was interesting to see Jaroslaw campaigning in favor of “balance”.