New leader for Polish opposition party
PR dla Zagranicy
Grzegorz Siwicki
25.11.2017 17:00
Liberal politician Katarzyna Lubnauer was on Saturday elected the new leader of Poland’s opposition Nowoczesna (Modern) party.
Katarzyna Lubnauer and Ryszard Petru at the party convention in Warsaw on Saturday. Photo: PAP/Leszek Szymański
Lubnauer beat the party’s previous leader and founder Ryszard Petru by nine votes in a closely fought election at a convention in Warsaw that was attended by more than 300 delegates.
Lubnauer, who until now headed the party’s parliamentary caucus, has said that there is a “strong need for change” both within her socially and economically liberal party and among the Polish opposition as a whole.
She has also said that Nowoczesna needed to “regain credibility” and become an "icon of the middle class."
Nowoczesna was founded in late May 2015 by Petru, an economist, just a few months before Poland’s parliamentary elections that year.
His party won 7.6% of the vote, which resulted in Nowoczesna taking 28 seats in the 460-member lower house of parliament, a major success for a new grouping.
Nowoczesna has recently seen a drop in its approval ratings. Some of its MPs quit earlier this year and defected to the rival Civic Platform (PO) opposition party.
One other parliamentarian in early November joined a new centre-right party allied with the country’s ruling conservatives.
(gs/pk)
Source: IAR, TVP Info