(7 Apr 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Warsaw - 7 April 2024
1. SOUNDBITE (English) Vanessa Gera, AP correspondent: ++PARTLY OVERLAID BY SHOTS 2 TO 5++
"It's election day in Poland. Millions of people are voting for mayors and representatives to local and regional governments. In other words, the authorities closest to the lives of most people. The election is a test for Prime Minister Donald Tusk, just four months after he took power. Tusk's victory ended eight years of conservative rule that pushed Poland's democratic system to a breaking point. But it has not been easy for Tusk. In just one example, his promise to liberalise the country's strict abortion law is being hampered by conservatives in his own coalition. Tusk's party and the opposition Conservatives are the dominant groups and are running neck and neck, according to polls. Runoff votes are expected in two weeks time in cases where candidates for mayor don't reach 50%. But by Monday, we should have a fairly good idea of the relative balance of power in the country."
2. Various of voters casting ballots and registering at polling stations
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: Warsaw - 15 October 2023
3. Wide of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on stage, crowd chanting “Donald, Donald”
4. Mid of people cheering
5. Wide of Tusk speaking on stage
STORYLINE:
Voters across Poland are casting ballots in local elections Sunday in the first electoral test for the coalition government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk nearly four months since it took power.
Voters will elect mayors as well as members of municipal councils and provincial assemblies, an important exercise in self-governance that is one of the great achievements of the democratic transformation that Poland made when it threw off communism 35 years ago.
In all there are nearly 190,000 registered candidates running for local government positions in the central European nation of 38 million people.
Runoff votes will take place two weeks later, on April 21, in cases where mayoral candidates do not win at least 50% of the vote in Sunday's first round.
Opinion polls released in the days ahead of the vote showed the two largest political formations running neck-and-neck: Tusk's Civic Coalition, an electoral coalition led by his centrist and pro-European Union Civic Platform party, and Law and Justice, a national conservative party that governed the country from 2015 until last year.
Several other groups trail the two main groups, including the Third Way coalition, the Left and the radical right-wing Confederation party.
Tusk's coalition government, which includes the Third Way and the Left, together won the national election in October. The result amid record turnout spelled the end of eight bumpy years of rule by Law and Justice, which was accused by the European Union of violating democratic standards with its changes to the judicial system and public media.
Tusk won on promises to reverse many of those changes and is trying to implement that program, but it isn't easy. His attempts to restore independence to the judicial system are a long process that will require the passage of new legislation.
And a promise to liberalise the strict abortion law is being hampered by conservatives in Tusk’s own coalition.
Local governments have played an important role in the two major crises of recent years, rolling out vaccinations against COVID-19 and helping the huge numbers of Ukrainian refugees who arrived in the country after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
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