Vote on virus law shows rifts in Poland's ruling coalition

Analysts say a defeated parliament vote on a COVID-19 draft law promoted by Poland's deputy prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski has exposed deep divisions within the country's ruling right-wing coalition and a weakening of the position of its chief policy maker

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A COVID-19 draft law defeated in Poland's parliament has exposed deep divisions inside the ruling right-wing coalition and a weakening of the country's most powerful politician, Jaroslaw Kaczynski analysts said on Wednesday.

Some 61 lawmakers of the so-called United Right ruling team led by Kaczynski’s Law and Justice Party abstained or voted against the law in the 460-seat lower house late Tuesday. Another 15 of the ruling coalition's 228 lawmakers didn't even show up for the vote. Analysts said the result marked an unprecedented high degree of dissent within the ruling coalition and poses a challenge to Kaczynski's leadership.

The vote indicates that “the United Right does not exist as such any more," political analyst Barbara Brodzińska-Mirowska from Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun told private TVN24. “The rifts are really deep and the games and interests are very much advanced, and things will not get better."

It also shows the “political weakness of Jaroslaw Kaczynski” who pushed for the law's adoption. The outcome will have “quite big consequences on the work of the parliament and on our political life,” Brodzinska-Mirowska said.

The widely criticized draft law would mandate regular COVID-19 testing of employees and enable those who got infected in the workplace to seek compensation from colleagues who refused testing.

Main opposition Civic Platform party leader, Borys Budka said on Twitter that the vote was Kaczynski's “spectacular defeat.”

“It seems that the message reaching the voters will be that the chaos inside the ruling camp is growing and it's not certain if anyone is in control of it,” commentator Kamil Dziubka wrote on the Onet.pl portal.

The draft law's defeat comes at a time when the ruling coalition is losing popular backing amid surging prices on staple goods, much-criticized tax reform, revelations of surveillance by spyware of government critics, and regional tension. The conservative coalition, in power since 2015, has also been losing ground in opinion polls.

The Law and Justice Party blamed the opposition for the draft law's defeat, saying that it prevented proper, wide-ranging debate on how it should be shaped.