Poland was heading on Saturday for a minority government by the conservative Catholic Law and Justice party after the breakdown of talks with the liberal Civic Platform party to form a coalition government.
The prime minister designate Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz of the Catholic Law and Justice (PiS) party, made a final plea on Saturday for the liberals to return to the negotiating table while acknowledging the chances were "less than 25 percent" compared to 50 percent on Friday.
Marcinkiewicz said that if negotiations failed on a coalition government he would present a minority government, with the indirect support of the Civic Platform (PO) party, to outgoing President Aleksander Kwasniewski today.
"I want to propose to the Platform [party] to sign, for a fixed period, a program contract.
PiS party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski said on Saturday there was no possibility of a coalition government with any other party than the Civic Platform.
"In this parliament there is only one possible coalition: between the PiS and PO," he said.
His party did not favor fresh elections, which would hand victory to the populist, eurosceptic Samoobrona and the far-right League of Polish Families (LPR), Kaczynski said.
Kwasniewski said that holding new elections could prove the only way of solving the crisis, though he hoped to "encourage the Law and Justice party and Civic Platform to form a coalition."
"Of course we don't want early elections. We are sure that in this parliament it will still be possible to form a government with Civic Platform," the PiS leader said.
It was up to the liberal party, he said, to get over its "state of shock" at losing both parliamentary elections on Sept. 25 and the presidential poll yesterday.
"If that does not happen, and if the PO takes the path of destruction, the situation could indeed become difficult and could result in early elections," warned Kaczynski, the twin brother of president-elect Lech Kaczynski who beat the PO's Donald Tusk in a run-off yesterday.
The conservatives and liberals broke off their coalition talks on Wednesday.
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