Poland very likely to be governed in cohabitation

In a national address on Monday evening (Poland's President Andrzej Duda is to announce the name of the new prime minister who will form a new cabinet after the Oct. 15 parliamentary election. According to the opposition, even if the president chooses Mateusz Morawiecki (current PM), the Law and Justice (PiS) government stands no chance to survive the vote of confidence in the new parliament.

The numbers are unrelenting - PiS is 37 votes short of winning the Sejm's approval. As a result, it appears that the upcoming term will be held in cohabitation.

Cohabitation is a situation in which the sitting president and the government come form different political parties or affiliations. When the ruling party or coalition has a parliamentary majority strong enough to override the presidential veto, the president's position is weaker.

However, in order to reject the president's veto, the parliament needs at least 276 votes (out of 460) cast with at least 230 MPs present. The most likely new ruling coalition of Civic Coalition, Third Way, and New Left will not be able to muster that many votes. Therefore, president Andrzej Duda will have the power to veto any bills he deems wrong.

Since 1989, Poland has been governed in cohabition five times so far. At first, in 1993-1995, when Solidarity's Lech Wałęsa was president and a SLD-PSL coalition formed a cabinet. In the 1997-2001 term, Aleksander Kwaśniewski of SLD was president with an AWS-UW coalition government, and later with an only AWS-formed cabinet.

Kwaśniewski was still in office when PiS won the 2005 election and so Poland was governed in cohabitation for two months. Between 2007 and 2010, PiS-supported president Lech Kaczyński fulfilled his duties with Donald Tusk as prime minister of PO-PSL cabinet.

Finally, after being elected president in 2015, Andrzej Duda served as head of state during the last four months of the PO-PSL government.