Poland’s opposition party leaders sign a coalition deal after collectively winning election

The leaders of Polish opposition parties signed a coalition agreement on Friday that lays out a roadmap for governing the nation over the next four years — even though they may have to wait weeks to get their chance to take power.

The parties collectively won a majority of votes in last month’s national election, running as separate groups but vowing to work together to restore rule of law after eight years of rule by a populist government that eroded judicial independence.

Their candidate to be the next prime minister is Donald Tusk, a former prime minister who leads the largest of the opposition parties, the centrist and pro-European Union group, Civic Coalition.

Tusk said the parties worked to seal their agreement before the Independence Day holiday on Saturday.

“From today we are ready to take responsibility for our homeland,” Tusk said, saying that the agreement would offer a set of “signposts and recommendations for our work.”

The conservative party that has governed Poland for the past eight years, Law and Justice, won more votes than any single party but does not have a majority and has no potential coalition partner.

President Andrzej Duda nonetheless gave Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki of Law and Justice a first chance to try to form a government.

Most commentators say Morawiecki’s mission is doomed, and they believe Duda tapped him to show loyalty to Law and Justice, the party he is allied with.

The coalition alliance represents a broad alliance of parties with sometimes conflicting views. One key issue is abortion, a highly divisive issue in a traditionally Catholic country undergoing rapid secularization.

Tusk’s Civic Coalition is an electoral alliance of four parties led by his centrist Civic Platform party which also includes the Greens. A new political group called the Third Way includes the long-established agrarian party, the Polish People’s Party, and the new Poland 2050, led by Szymon Holownia, a conservative Catholic who was the host of Poland’s Got Talent reality show.

The New Left also includes some former communists but increasingly a new generation of younger progressives. One of the leaders who signed the agreement, Robert Biedron, said his group planned to introduce a legislative proposal to liberalize the abortion law.

Another New Left leader, Wlodzmierz Czarzasty, acknowledged that the coalition agreement would require a lot of compromise and that his group would not get everything it wants. Still, he expressed satisfaction that it would be the first time in 18 years that the left would be included in government.

The newly elected legislature — both the lower house, the Sejm, and the Senate — will meet for the first time next Monday.

According to the constitution, Morawiecki will have two weeks to present a Cabinet to the president, and then two more to present it to the Sejm, deliver a policy speech and face a confidence vote. Only if he fails, as is expected, will the Sejm then have a chance to present its own candidate.