Main opposition party may announce new presidential candidate on Friday

As of Thursday, Małgorzata Kidawa-Błońska was still Civic Coalition's presidential candidate, yet polls have shown her voter support has plummeted.

TVN24 reporter Agata Adamek informed on Thursday that Civic Coalition leadership was discussing replacing Małgorzata Kidawa-Błońska with a new candidate.

"Fakty" TVN have found out that at 10am on Friday, Civic Platform (the largest party of Civic Coalition) is to make a decision regarding the presidential candidate.

PO senator Bogdan Zdrojewski said on Thursday: "If you want to replace candidates, you should replace them with someone who guarantees a better result". According to him, Donald Tusk would be such a candidate. "But he doesn't want to run," the senator said.

Adam Szłapka, the chairman of Modern Party, which is a member of Civic Coaliton, said there were plenty of potential candidates to replace Kidawa-Błońska. "We need to consider them all," he said.

Civic Coalition senator Marcin Bosacki said there were two serious candidates under consideration, should Kidawa-Błońska resigned: speaker of the Senate Tomasz Grodzki, and former foreign minister Radosław Sikorski.

TVN24's Agata Adamek has also heard that the mayor of Warsaw Rafał Trzaskowski was being tipped by some as potential presidential candidate. However, asked on Wednesday if he planned to run for president, Trzaskowski himself said: "I'm busy with Warsaw, direct the questions regarding rumours to those who spread them".

Poland's presidential election was initially supposed to take place on May 10, but the ruling conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party finally called it off after a row with a junior coalition party Accord. Despite calls to postpone the election due to the COVID-19 pandemic, PiS wanted to go ahead with the vote as scheduled and pushed a legislation through parliament that allowed to organise postal ballot.

The new election date has not been announced yet.