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Poles choose new president from former Solidarity comrades
10/24/2005
WARSAW, Oct 23 (AFP): Poles voted Sunday in the second round of an election to choose a new president from two former comrades-in-arms in the Solidarity movement, Donald Tusk, a liberal, and his conservative rival, Lech Kaczynski.
Opinion polls on Friday showed the race would be close between the two contenders, who finished far in front of a field of 12 in a first round two weeks ago.
Their parties did best in a legislative election at the end of last month and are in talks to form a coalition government.
Tusk was credited with around 51 percent of the vote and Kaczynski with 49 percent.
Although they once sang from the same hymn sheet when they were in Solidarity, the ideologies of the two have evolved differently since the heady days of the 1980s when the first free trade union in the communist bloc was founded, heralding the demise of the totalitarian system with its centralised economies.
Tusk, the 48-year-old candidate of the business-friendly Civic Platform (PO) party, has become a dyed in the wool liberal, favouring free-market forces.
Kaczynski, running on the ticket of the Law and Justice (PiS) party he helped found in 2001, which won the most seats in last month's legislative vote, just ahead of PO, is a conservative whose party paradoxically favours state intervention in the economy and social aid for the underprivileged.
Most polling stations opened before sunrise at 6:00 am (0400 GMT) and were due to close at 8:00 pm, giving the 30-million-strong electorate 14 hours to choose a new president.
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