Polish President Bronsilaw Komorowski to face runoff election

Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski has vowed to urgently seek a referendum on voting and tax rules if he is re-elected, the day after an opposition candidate forced him into a runoff.

Nationalist party candidate Andrzej Duda is expected to receive 34.5 per cent of the first-round vote, to Komorowski's 33.1 per cent, according to the IPSOS exit poll released by the private TVN24 and the state-run PAP news agency following Sunday's vote. Official results could be announced late Monday, according to state electoral authorities.

The vote is seen as a test for Poland's main political forces ahead of the fall general election.

Komorowski's result is seen as a defeat for him, even more so because another anti-establishment candidate, punk rock star Pawel Kukiz, is expected to receive some 20.5 per cent of the vote, giving a total of 55 per cent of the ballots against the incumbent. Tradition-minded and dignified, Komorowski needs to mobilize all resources if he wants to win the May 24 runoff.

On Monday he vowed he will call a referendum that will push for long-debated changes to voting and to tax regulations, but gave no date for it. The referendum would ask Poles whether they want the introduction of single-mandate constituencies, an end to the funding of political parties from tax money and protection of taxpayers in disputes with state financial authorities.

The good showing of the youthful Duda, and energy-projecting Kukiz, pointed to the rising discontent of many Poles with the way that the pro-European Union and pro-business Civic Platform has been running the country since 2007. Komorowski, who was a member of that party until he left in 2010 to be a nonaligned president, has been in harmony with the party, but that has apparently hurt his position.

Komorowski's current five-year term ends in August.