WARSAW (Reuters) – Postal voting could allow Poland’s presidential elections to be held in May despite the coronavirus, President Andrzej Duda said in an interview published on Saturday, amid signs the governing coalition could split over the issue.
The nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party wants to hold elections on May 10 despite the pandemic, and has proposed legislation to introduce postal ballots to replace physical voting.
A more liberal junior coalition partner, Accord, said it was unrealistic for the election to proceed and proposed a postponement of two years.
“This solution (postal voting) was used a few days ago in Bavaria,” Duda told the Catholic daily newspaper Nasz Dziennik.
“We can also introduce this idea here … Postal voting would be something new in Poland, but the situation is unusual.”
Asked when elections should take place if not on May 10, Duda said the vote should be held when it is safe to do so.
In a sign of the party’s determination to implement postal voting, PiS on Friday replaced the head of the post office with Tomasz Zdzikot, who will leave his post as a Deputy Defense Minister.
Polish daily Rzeczpospolita quoted a source with knowledge of the matter as saying PiS wanted a trusted official as head of the post office at such a critical time.
Poland has imposed sweeping restrictions on public life to stop the spread of the virus, including closing schools, parks, forests and hotels and banning gatherings outside of more than two people, excluding families.
As of Saturday, it had reported 3,503 cases of the coronavirus and 73 deaths.
Duda criticized the European Commission in the interview for a lack of support over the pandemic.
“As a country we have not received any extra financial help from Brussels,” he said.
“You can’t see any great engagement from European institutions…concerning the activity of the European Commission, I must say it looks pretty poor,” he said.
(Reporting by Alan Charlish and Anna Koper; Editing by Ros Russell)
