Lesser Poland. Łukasz Kmita lost in the vote for marshal. Although PiS had the majority and was the only candidate

In the 39-person Lesser Poland assembly, Law and Justice has the majority, with 21 seats. The Civic Coalition has 12 seats, and Trzecia Droga – 6. In Monday's vote to elect a new voivodeship marshal, former voivode of Lesser Poland and currently PiS MP Łukasz Kmita was the only candidate submitted. Recommended by Law and Justice.

Despite PiS's majority in the regional assembly, Kmita was not elected. 13 out of 38 councilors present voted for his candidacy. 22 councilors were against and two abstained. One vote was invalid.

This means that the position remains vacant.

Right after the vote, Kmita thanked those councilors who supported his candidacy. – Nothing changes for me. I will continue to work for Małopolska, and I am convinced that it will be beneficial for our region, he said.

During the session, councilor Rafał Stuglik, recommending Kmita for the marshal of Małopolska on behalf of the PiS club, emphasized that the candidate had a rich local government biography. – Our candidate is a relatively young person, but he became known as a very dynamic and effective local government official, but at the same time we all remember him as the voivode of Lesser Poland, who operated in extremely difficult conditions, including the pandemic – he said.

Grzegorz Małodobry from the Civic Coalition club assessed during the session that the PiS candidate – who is an MP, not a councilor – “was somehow brought in a briefcase.”

38-year-old Łukasz Kmita comes from Olkusz. In the years 2020-2023 he was the voivode of Lesser Poland. In the last parliamentary elections, he was elected as an MP from the PiS list. Unsuccessfully in the April local elections he ran for president of Krakow.

Also on Monday, during the session, Jan Tadeusz Duda – professor of technical sciences, full professor of the AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków, and privately the father of President Andrzej Duda – was re-elected as the chairman of the Lesser Poland Voivodeship assembly.

He was the only candidate proposed for the position of chairman of the regional council. He held this position in the years 2019-2024. In Monday's vote, 20 councilors voted in favor of it and 17 were against. One vote was invalid.

The new chairman, thanking for the election, said that he decided to run for office, despite his senior age, because “he wanted this term of office to pass in the same spirit as the previous one – substantive, good, in an atmosphere of substantive discussion.”

– We do not bring political disputes here at the voivodeship level, we just try to work for the citizens. I agreed to run for office to maintain this tone of work, he noted.

During Monday's session, councilors also elected two vice-chairmen of the Lesser Poland regional council. They were Jadwiga Wójtowicz and Wojciech Skruch (both from PiS).