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Left wing leader to stand down after election failure

PR dla Zagranicy
Peter Gentle 10.10.2011 13:40
Head of the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) Grzegorz Napieralski will not be running for re-selection as party chief after failing to get elected in yesterday's parliamentary elections.

Grzegorz
Grzegorz Napieralski; photo - PAP/Leszek Szymanski

The politician plans to call up an early congress of the party, which had been set for June next year.

According to preliminary election results released by the National Electoral Commission, the Democratic Left Alliance received 8.19 percent of votes, well below the hoped for two-digit result.

Napieralski himself only received 6.4 percent in the city of Szczeczin in the north west of the country.

In his post-election speech, the politician put the blame for the party's defeat on what he claimed was scant media coverage during the campaign.

SLD have never recovered from their peak of 41 percent in the 2001 election when they took power. But a series of corruption scandals saw them kicked out of government in the 2005 elections and they have never recovered that level of support ever since.

MEP Wojciech Olejniczak, a fomer leader of the party, claims that Napieralski is completely responsible for the party’s poor results in the parliamentary elections.

Mistakes listed by Olejniczak include the signing of an economic agreement with the Polish Business Center Club – which could have alienated many of its poorer or left wing electorate, a poor election programme alongside a lack of communication within the party and badly drawn up electoral rolls.

"We need to act now. Grzegorz Napieralski and his people are responsible for the party results,”says Olerjniczak.

“They held 100 percent of power, they decided on everything. Many heads rolled. The Democratic Left Alliance is bleeding, but it has not bled to death. At this point, we must seek to rebuild the position of the party with the help of people who have delivered. Alongside working within parliament, we must focus on organising the party ranks in local branches, which have been brought to ruin," he said Monday.

Warsaw MP Ryszard Kalisz, from the Democratic Left Alliance, shares the view that the party must have an urgent post-mortem on their latest failure at the polls.

“I demand that party board members summon a national council of the Democratic Left Alliance as soon as possible, preferably this Saturday or the next. The Council should run an analysis of the electoral campain. They should then establish a task force which would carry out a political audit. A party convention should then follow.”

According to deputy party head Katarzyna Piekarska, many mistakes have been made in the run-up to the parliamentary elections.

“I believe that Grzegorz will submit his resignation this week, so that preparations ahead of an early party congress can be made,” Piekarska said in an interview with commercial TV station TVN24. (ab/pg)

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