POLAND: A week after Poland's conservatives dominated a general election, their bitter fight to win the presidency on Sunday is threatening plans for a coalition government.
Few Poles are surprised by the tough stance of the pugnacious Kaczynski twins, leaders of the election-winning Law and Justice Party (PiS). However, it was their supposedly conciliatory candidate for prime minister who ruffled feathers yesterday.
Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, chosen by the Kaczynskis to lead the PiS nascent coalition with the Civic Platform (PO), angered liberals when asked for his views on homosexuality.
"It's unnatural. The family is natural and the state must stand guard over the family," he told the Polish edition of Newsweek.
"I don't care if someone is homosexual or not, and even if I found out something like that, I would only judge a person on their actions," he insisted. "But if that person tries to 'infect' others with their homosexuality, then the state must intervene in this violation of freedom."
His comments echoed pre-election musings from Jaroslaw Kaczynski that homosexuals should not be allowed to teach in schools and the decision of Warsaw mayor Lech Kaczynski to ban the city's gay parade for the last two years.
Their views however are not unusual in deeply Catholic Poland, where the PiS and PO are fighting for the lead role in a right-wing revival that trounced the ruling socialists in the general election and has the left floundering ahead of the presidential vote.
Lech Kaczynski trails the PO's Donald Tusk in opinion polls, but is catching up after Jaroslaw renounced his claim to the post of prime minister, and so banished the bizarre prospect of the portly identical twins filling Poland's two most powerful offices.
The intensifying battle for the presidency has soured coalition talks between the PiS and the PO.
The Kaczynskis continue to accuse the PO and Mr Tusk of favouring big business over Poland's millions of poor and unemployed, and televised talks between the parties collapsed after something close to a slanging match.
"This is an absurd situation," said Mikolaj Czesnik, a political scientist. "Instead of discussing their programme, the two parties' objective is to ensure victory for their presidential candidate."
While both parties have pledged to work together to fight corruption, cut 18 per cent unemployment and slash bureaucracy, they disagree over the pace and depth of reform, with PiS promising softer, slower changes than the economically liberal PO.
