Polish PM Faces Second Confidence Vote over Bugging Scandal
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk is to face a second confidence vote in as many weeks as the country's opposition seeks to force his center-right government to resign over a high-profile bugging scandal.
The opposition conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party said on Tuesday it would put forward a motion in parliament calling on the government to step down.
A separate motion would ask that the Interior Minister Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz, who is implicated in the scandal, also resign.
But analysts in Warsaw believe both Sienkiewicz and Tusk's government will survive the motions, expected in parliament on Friday.
Tusk sailed through a vote of confidence he called himself on June 25, a savvy move that effectively preempted attempts to topple him.
His two-party governing coalition scored backing from 237 MPs, with 203 against and no abstentions in the 460-member parliament.
The controversy began with the leak of exchanges between top government officials in Poland.
The Polish news magazine Wprost first reported on the leaks in mid-June when it released a secret recording of the central bank chief purportedly telling Sienkiewicz that he would support the government's economic policy if the then finance minister resigned.
The magazine has since released transcripts of other exchanges, including one in which Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski allegedly calls Poland's U.S. ties "worthless" and blasts British Prime Minister David Cameron as "incompetent on EU affairs".
The private conversations allegedly took place at a number of fashionable Warsaw restaurants over the last 18 months.
Tusk has called the leaks an attempted "coup d'etat" aimed at "destabilizing" Poland at a time of crisis in neighboring Ukraine.
The bugging affair has already resulted in charges against four people, including a restaurant manager and waiter -- prompting some to label the affair "Waitergate" on social media.
Tusk began his second consecutive term in office following a November 2011 landslide win, but his popularity has since waned amid muted economic growth and persistent unemployment.
The next regularly scheduled general election is due in the autumn of 2015.
Source: Agence France Presse
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