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Poland's fragile coalition teetered on the brink yesterday after one of its minority members, the rural and populist Samoobrona (Self-Defence) party threatened to pull its two remaining ministers out of the Government headed by Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski.
Squabbles within the coalition have wracked the Government for weeks, and Kaczynski, whose twin brother Lech is president, has repeatedly tried to intimidate his allies into co-operating by threatening a snap election. If the coalition survives the next general election is due in 2009.
The situation has been aggravated since the prime minister fired the leader of Self-Defence, Andrzej Lepper, who served both as agriculture minister and deputy prime minister, after allegations of corruption surfaced.
Lepper is described by one Polish source as "a peasant warlord of dubious reputation" but the allegations against him remain hazy and the prime minister seems in no hurry to present the evidence.
But he considered the accusations strong enough to sack Lepper, who yesterday raised the stakes by threatening to pull out his party's other two ministers.
If the ministers left the Government it would almost certainly collapse, precipitating fresh elections. But after the threat was made, Self-Defence changed its stance and said it left the ministers' fate in Kaczynski's hands.
What is under way is a game of chicken, with the prime minister daring the Opposition to bring down the Government, the Opposition daring the prime minister to do the same, but each pulling back at the last minute.
Kaczynski originally fired Lepper in September 2006, but then felt obliged to bring him back into the Government to keep it alive.
The corruption allegations that have rocked the Government originated with the Anti-Corruption Bureau (CBA) set up by the Kaczynski twins with the aim of investigating corruption during the communist era and cleaning up Poland's public life today.
When the agency was set up last year it was praised by Transparency International (TI), the organisation that monitors corruption in governments around the world. But now TI dismisses the agency as "a propaganda machine of the Government".
"It's made a couple of spectacular arrests that played well in the medial," said Jagoda Walorek of TI. "Other than that it's difficult to say what they do."
Lepper says the CBA as "a political police unit that exists for the protection of only one party, the main party".
There were hopes that the right wing party, Law and Justice, led by Kaczynski would transform into a centrist organisation along the lines of Germany's Christian Democrats. But its coalition partners, Self-Defence and the League of Polish Families, are the two most Eurosceptic and nationalist parties in Poland.
- Independent
