Elections for the Marshal of the Małopolska Province. Łukasz Kmita lost again, the regional assembly remains in a stalemate

PiS MP and former candidate for mayor of Kraków Łukasz Kmita (PiS) failed to receive support from his own party in the Małopolska regional assembly for the fourth time and has not yet become the marshal of this province. He received 16 votes, his opponent from the opposition Jan Klęczar 19, and 4 votes were invalid. This was the second vote that day. In the previous one, Klęczar received 18 votes and Kmita 14.

Another extraordinary session was called for Tuesday at 6 p.m. Klęczar announced that the opposition would nominate another candidate.

Read also: PiS has a majority, but Małopolska still does not have a marshal. Councilors do not want a “president's candidate”

After elections The only candidate for the position of marshal was Kmita. He was not elected for the fourth time, although Law and Justice In the 39-person regional council, he has 21 seats, guaranteeing a majority. The first time, 13 votes were cast for his candidacy, and the second time – 17. In Monday's vote, 14 councilors voted for his candidacy. And in the last, evening vote, 16.

Just before the vote, the councilor PSL Stanisław Sorys, on behalf of – as he said – the Third Way and the Civic Coalition, submitted a new candidate for the province marshal. It was Jan Krzysztof Klęczar, recently elected governor from the PSL. He also lacked the votes to be elected marshal. However, he gained more support than the PiS candidate – 18 votes. And the second time, in the evening vote, 19.

Seven people cast invalid votes in the first Monday voting, four in the second.

The PiS “rebels” are risking the eventual dissolution of the regional assembly. If the local parliament fails to appoint a speaker by July 9, early elections would have to be held.

– We are sorry that we were unable to elect the marshal (Kmity – ed.) twice. This results from various situations. In Law and Justice, everyone believes that they have the right to decide and feel like free people. This is probably the result of this – said PiS councilor Barbara Nowak, a former education superintendent for Małopolska, before Monday's vote.

According to the regulations, the provincial assembly must elect a marshal within three months of the announcement of election results, i.e. by July 9. If this does not happen, early elections in the province will be necessary. In a letter to the chairman of the provincial assembly, Łukasz Kmita asked for the session not to be convened until July 10 or for the session to be adjourned until that day. He justified his request with the “good of Law and Justice”.

Let us recall: according to Jan Tadeusz Duda, chairman of the Małopolska regional assembly, this was an ill-considered request and could not be fulfilled, among other things, due to the second reading scheduled for Monday's session and the adoption of a resolution on the adoption of an environmental protection program against noise.

– This resolution must be adopted because the law obliges us to do so. If I had not convened the session, I would be held criminally liable for not ensuring that the tasks that are timely are carried out. These are timely tasks of the provincial government – he emphasized before Monday's session.

Read also: Secret letter leaked regarding the election of the marshal. “It aims at the good of PiS”

Referring to the possible break in the proceedings proposed by Kmita, he said that his duty is to comply with the statute. – My role is to efficiently conduct the proceedings, not to dissolve the regional council. Efficient conduct of the proceedings allows for announcing breaks, I have the right to call a break at any time. But this break is to make the proceedings more efficient, not to make them more difficult – he replied.

According to unofficial information, councilors gathered around the current Speaker Witold Kozłowski and, more broadly, Beata Szydło and Andrzej Adamczyk. During the previous session, the candidate tried to calm down this conflict by proposing Kozłowski to the new provincial board as the first vice-marshal. Among the members of the new provincial board proposed by Kmita there was no representative of Sovereign Poland, which has two councilors in the regional assembly, even though the coalition agreement provides for such a position for a representative of this party.

After the first vote in May, the PiS president Jaroslaw Kaczynski When asked by journalists about the situation of PiS in Małopolska, he said: “Well, rebellion is rebellion, it is a matter of certain differences of opinion”. When asked whether local activists did not like MP Kmita, he replied: “Sometimes some people do not like new people, those who are, well, let's say, from a higher shelf in the intellectual sense”. He added that it is unpleasant and he will fight against it. After another vote in June, when Kmita again did not obtain the required majority of votes, PiS spokesman Rafał Bochenek commented that one cannot “leave these matters unanswered”. “Therefore, for people who behaved unfairly towards the majority of PiS councillors, and above all voters, consequences will be drawn at the party leadership level” – he declared. He added that the future fate of Małopolska “depends on some people holding positions in the Małopolska regional council”.

On Friday, Bochenek announced that, by decision of PiS chairman Jarosław Kaczyński, the director of the regional council's office, Michał Ciechowski, had been suspended from the PiS party and steps would be taken to remove him from the party. “In accordance with the decision of the party leadership, the voting on Monday will be subject to discipline regarding the selection of the composition of the board of the Małopolska province recommended by the PiS leadership,” the PiS spokesman said. Łukasz Kmita, 38, comes from Olkusz. In the years 2020-2023, he was the Małopolska province governor. In the last parliamentary elections, he was elected as a member of parliament from the PiS list. Recently, he unsuccessfully ran in the local elections for the mayor of Kraków.