WARSAW (POLAND) – Polish incumbent Andrzej Duda has won the presidential election. Results from over 99% of polling stations are in his favour with the remaining uncounted votes unlikely to alter the outcome, said the National Electoral Commission on Monday.
Duda, who is an ally of ruling nationalists, is slated to help the Law and Justice (PiS) party go ahead with its reforms of the judiciary, which have been criticised by the European Union, and magnanimous spending programmes.
Duda got 51.21% of the vote, while opposition candidate Rafal Trzaskowski received 48.79%. The difference in votes between the candidates amounted to around 500,000.
“I don’t want to speak on behalf of the campaign staff, but I think that this difference is large enough that we have to accept the result,” Grzegorz Schetyna, the former head of Poland’s opposition Civic Platform (PO) grouping said.
Record turnout was witnessed and it stood at 68.12%, said the commission.
“We are gathering information and signals about different irregularities and we are still only talking about polls and only a percentage of results from the National Electoral Commission so we don’t have a full picture of the situation,” Tomasz Siemoniak, a PO member of parliament, said.
“Today or perhaps at the latest tomorrow…we will be able to indicate what the scale of these protests is,” Sylwester Marciniak, the head of the electoral commission said.
(Photos syndicated via Reuters)
This story has been edited by BH staff and is published from a syndicated field