By Jo Harper
WARSAW (AA) - If Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party wins the autumn parliamentary elections, Mateusz Morawiecki said he wants to remain prime minister, but will also not rule out a presidential bid in 2025.
“I will think about this in the future, now there are completely different tasks on the horizon,” Morawiecki told Super Express tabloid.
"I am not a bit tired of everyday work. You can't get tired of serving Poland," he said.
The Polish prime minister did not answer a question in the interview as to when PiS would present its program for the parliamentary elections.
“We will show all our election plans in due course. Today, the electoral staff is working on it, and for mid-May, we are planning another great debate, from which the first points of our election program are to emerge,” he said.
He added that it is not easy to govern a country during crises. “Some say that it is not one black swan, but a whole flock of black swans that have flown over Poland and we have to deal with them,” Morawiecki said.
“We have not managed to achieve everything,” he acknowledged and said that in the next term, his government would drive the construction of public housing.
Morawiecki has been prime minister since 2019, four years after the nationalist PiS won its second parliamentary election. Within the ruling coalition, he has faced opposition from Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro over his alleged alignment with the EU. Warsaw, accused of judicial backsliding, overseen by Ziobro, has been deprived of EU funds.
Polish President Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who is also the founder and leader of PiS, is reportedly not in the best of health and may withdraw from front politics after this year’s elections.
The future direction of PiS may well be determined by the factional infighting within the ruling coalition between Morawiecki and Ziobro.