Premier blames public TV for election failure

Premier blames public TV for election failure
Created: Tuesday, October 23. 2007
Jarosław Kaczynski told the Polish Radio on Tuesday morning that his Law and Justice party had lost the election on Sunday because of the mobilisation of young people to vote on Sunday. In his opinion, in particular the public TV’s campaign “Vote - change Poland” was to blame for the result. “The campaign explicitly called for votes against Law and Justice”, claimed Kaczyński and added that the broadcasting of the campaign adverts on the public TV was proof that PiS had not controlled the public media in Poland, as their critics had charged. Another PiS leader Tadeusz Cymański told private Radio Zet that Polish Television “was not pro-governmental during the campaign", which was his reply to the allegations made by OCSE election observers that public television had not granted equal airtime to all of the three leading parties during the election campaign. PiS chairman also told the radio that his debate with Donald Tusk had a significant impact on the results. "If I’d been better prepared for it or if I’d avoided it altogether, the election results might have been different", believes Jarosław Kaczyński. The premier said he was aware that the votes cast in big towns and by young people, who were mainly encouraged to vote by text messaging campaigns, were key to the overall electoral score. Jarosław Kaczyński admitted that he had noticed some mistakes on the part of PiS during the campaign, but refused to name them.