Polish Prime Minister Gambles on Snap Poll

Poland is poised to hold a snap general election less than two years after the nationalist prime minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, launched his controversial "moral revolution" to purge Poland of post-communist sleaze, it emerged yesterday.

With the minority government of populists hit by mudslinging and paralysis, the lower house was last night deliberating a motion to disband parliament, setting the scene for elections next month.

It is Mr Kaczynski's own plan to hold elections less than halfway through his four-year term. He may have engineered his own downfall, since few observers believe he can build a stable governing coalition. But Mr Kaczynski clearly calculates that he can win a new term, entrench himself in power, and step up the nationalist campaign that has seen him accused of witchhunts at home and earned Poland a reputation as the EU's most awkward and unruly member.

The election, expected on October 21, would be tantamount to a referendum on Mr Kaczynski and his twin brother and president, Lech. Even before yesterday's vote, the governing Law and Justice party had started campaigning, with Jaroslaw Kaczynski exploiting his influence on national television to lobby for support.

Opinion polls this summer have consistently shown the main opposition, the liberal-conservative Civic Platform, up to 10 points ahead of the Kaczynski party. The opposition leader, Donald Tusk, promised a "great battle" for power and warned Mr Kaczynski: "Your state must come to an end." This week, however, a poll put the ruling party ahead, suggesting that Mr Kaczynski's gamble may be a good one. "Kaczynski thinks he can win, that's why he has triggered the election," said Jacques Rupnik, a Paris-based expert on Poland and central Europe.

During the prime minister's short term in office he has engaged in permanent jousting with Russia, seen relations with Germany sink to their lowest point since the collapse of communism, and come close to wrecking the EU's new reform treaty replacing the failed constitution.

At home, he stands accused of witchhunts and purges because of new laws and national agencies aimed at penalizing hundreds of thousands of people for alleged links with the communist secret police before 1989, making wholesale changes in the civil service, packing public television with supporters, and creating a climate of fear and intolerance that has helped drive away hundreds of thousands of mainly young people.

Many see him as a schemer who believes Poland is surrounded by hostile neighbors and undermined at home by shady mafias of liberals, ex-communist secret policemen and ruthless businessmen.

Mr Kaczynski has orchestrated the collapse of his government in the past two months, firing ministers and forcing two junior coalition partners on the extreme right and hard left to quit the government. For the past fortnight Poland has been in uproar over the arrests of Mr Kaczynski's former interior minister and police chief, as well as over warrants for the arrest of two big businessmen. In methods that recall the tactics of the Kremlin against hostile "oligarchs", armed police in balaclavas were used to make the arrests.

The election campaign promises to be exceptionally dirty. Neither of the frontrunners looks likely to be able to form a durable coalition, condemning Poland to months of instability and turbulence.