Polish left in death throes?

As Alicja Baczyńska reports, with just months away from the fall elections, does the left stand a chance of making it to Parliament? And having a future in politics in the years to come?

The shattering defeat of the Democratic Left Alliance, which ushered Magdalena Ogórek into the presidential bid, marks a new low in the party’s history, and the third consecutive defeat under SLD leader Leszek Miller.

The 2.4-percent support for Ogórek is higher still than the fellow left-wing candidate, maverick Janusz Palikot who garnered 1.5 percent in the vote.

“The left wing of the Polish political scene is over,” says political scientist Wojciech Jabłoński, from the University of Warsaw. “So practically Poles have no left wing now and will not have any left wing for 10 or 15 years.”

The latest poll shows the Democratic Left Alliance and Your Movement would fall well below the electoral threshold of five percent in the parliamentary ballot.