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Opposition, anti-EU parties the winners in Poland's European election

13 June 2004, 23:15 CET


Poland's opposition liberal and anti-EU parties emerged victorious in its first European Parliament elections on Sunday, an exit poll showed, after most people in the bloc's biggest new member shunned the chance to choose their deputies.

The main liberal opposition Civic Platform raced ahead of the pack, garnering 28 percent of the vote, according to an exit poll carried out by the PBS institute.

Two anti EU parties -- the ultra-Catholic Polish League of Families and populist radical farmers' party Samoobrona (Self-defence) came in second and third places, with 16 percent and 13 percent respectively, it said.

Official results were expected to start coming in after midnight (2200 GMT).

The blow to the ruling leftist coalition came after polls marked by absenteeism and apathy in a country which joined the EU just weeks ago.

With just four hours left to the close of voting, Poland's central electoral commission said only 15.40 percent of Poland's nearly 30 million voters had turned out to choose their first 54 European deputies.

While Poles were unimpressed by the polls, the country's leaders had been closely watching the result of the poll, gauging their prospects ahead of widely-expected early general elections following months of political crisis.

But analysts warned the low-turnout rate meant political parties could not, as they had hoped, consider the result as a test of widely expected early general elections.

"This result will not be compatible with the election to the Polish parliament," Marek Sarjusz-Wolski, a journalist at Unia and Polksa magazine told AFP.

Poland has been in political limbo since joining the European Union on May 1 after the unpopular leftist prime minister Leszek Miller of the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) resigned the day after membership.

Sunday's results -- if borne out officially -- could influence the outcome of a forthcoming vote of confidence in the man designated by President Aleksander Kwasniewski to replace Miller, former finance minister Marek Belka and thus affect the date of widely expected early elections.

Belka's ruling leftist Democratic Alliance (SLD) got 11 percent according to the exit poll -- better than expected after lingering in the doldrums over the past months in opinion polls.

The Polish Peasants' Party (PSL), crept into parliament with six percent.

The centrist Freedom Union (UW) was the only other party to qualify for a European Parliament seat with five percent of the vote.

Although a low turnout had been widely expected with Poles, angry at politicians after a series of corruption scandals which unleashed a domestic crisis, the figure was even lower than many had feared.

"The low turnout at the European elections is a red card shown to politicians in Poland," Henryk Kroll, a parliamentarian who represents Poland's German-speaking minority, told AFP.

Turnout was low during the day throughout the country, including in the cosmopolitan capital Warsaw which was deserted, where only 21.44 percent had voted, with many city dwellers having left the city for a holiday weekend.

Even Lech Walesa, the historic leader of the historic Solidarity trade union, which led Poland's breakaway from communism, described the elections as a "minor event for Poland."

In the Polish countryside, farmers, at the same time the most Eurosceptical and the biggest beneficiaries of the financial aid which came with EU membership, said they had either not voted at all, or for anti-EU parties.

"As they forced us to join the EU, it's better to choose candidates who will preserve our national interest," Lilia Kuchta, a 47-year-old housewife in the rural village of Zbrosza Duza, 70 kilometres (42 miles) south east of Warsaw told AFP.

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