A pro-European opposition coalition in Poland announced unexpectedly on Tuesday that its candidate for prime minister as the country heads toward an October election will be a deputy parliamentary speaker, rather than the main opposition leader.
The candidacy of Malgorzata Kidawa-Blonska was announced by Grzegorz Schetyna, the leader of Civic Platform, which is the dominant party in the European Coalition.
It was long assumed Schetyna himself would be the opposition coalition's pick for prime minister. But as the centrist bloc trails far behind the nationalist conservative ruling Law and Justice party, it appears to be an acknowledgement that Schetyna's lack of popularity is hurting its chances.
"I don't know how we didn't come up with this sooner," he told party members to laughter. He described Kidawa-Blonska, a former parliament speaker, as someone who "always worked for the good of Poland."
Despite a string of scandals, the governing Law and Justice party has been rising in the polls thanks to popular social spending measures and a conservative outlook appreciated in rural areas, with support recently of over 45 percent.
The European Coalition is the country's second largest political force, but trails far behind, and was even just under 20 percent in one recent opinion poll.
Jacek Kucharczyk, the head of the Institute of Public Affairs, a Warsaw-based think tank, called tapping Kidawa-Blonska a "smart move" and said it reminded him of when Law and Justice ahead of the 2015 election tapped Beata Szydlo as its prime ministerial candidate. That was also an acknowledgement that party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, though he had a devoted core of followers, was unpopular with many and hurting the party's overall chances.
Law and Justice won that election and Szydlo ended up serving as prime minister at first, replaced later with Mateusz Morawiecki, though Kaczynski has directed the government from behind the scenes the entire time.
Kucharczyk said the development "comes from Schetyna's lack of wider social appeal and large negative constituency. He is one of the most mistrusted politicians, just like Kaczynski, but unlike Kaczynski, Schetyna does not have such devoted followers."
Civic Platform governed for Poland from 2007-2015, most of the time under the leadership of then-Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who is now a top European Union leader.
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Former Cypriot President George Vassiliou, a successful businessman who helped to energize his divided island's economy and set it on the road to European Union membership, has died. He was 94.
Vassiliou died Wednesday after being hospitalized on Jan. 6 for a respiratory infection. Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides praised Vassiliou as a leader who became synonymous with the country's economic prosperity, social progress and push toward modernization.
“Cyprus has lost a universal citizen who broadened our homeland's international imprint,” Christodoulides said in a written statement.
His wife Androulla, a lawyer who twice served as a European commissioner, posted on X in the early hours Wednesday that her companion of 59 years “slipped away quietly in our arms” in hospital.
“It's difficult to say farewell to a man who was a superb husband and father, a man full of kindness and love for the country and its people,” she wrote.
When he became president in 1988, Vassiliou lifted hopes that a peace deal with the island's breakaway Turkish Cypriots was possible after more than a decade of off-again, on-again talks. He swiftly relaunched stalled reunification negotiations with Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash, but they ended at an impasse that continues today.
Cyprus was split into an internationally recognized Greek-speaking south and a Turkish-speaking north in 1974, when Turkey invaded the island after a coup aimed at uniting it with Greece. A Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence nine years later was recognized only by Turkey.
During an interview in 1989, one year into his five-year term as president, Vassiliou said: "The only dangerous thing for the Cyprus issue is to remain ... in a vacuum, forgotten and with no one taking any interest."
But Vassiliou succeeded on many other fronts, using his skills as a successful entrepreneur to modernize and expand his county’s economy, even though he had been raised by parents who were pro-communist.
Vassiliou was born in Cyprus in 1931 to two doctors who were activists and volunteered their services to the communist forces during the civil war that engulfed Greece in the immediate aftermath of World War II.
With the defeat of the communists in Greece in 1949, the Vassiliou family moved to Hungary and later Uzbekistan.
George Vassiliou initially studied medicine in Geneva and Vienna, but he later switched to economics, earning a doctorate from the University of Economics in Budapest.
After a brief stint doing marketing in London, Vassiliou returned to Cyprus in 1962, and he began a successful business career that made him a millionaire. He founded the Middle East Market Research Bureau, a consultancy business that grew to have offices in 30 countries in the Middle East, South Africa, eastern and central Europe.
In 1987, Vassilou was elected president of Cyprus as an independent entrepreneur who also was supported by the island's powerful communist party AKEL, which his father had one been a prominent member of.
Vassiliou bucked the staid political culture of the time by making the presidency more accessible to the public and visiting government offices and schools. That prompted some criticism that he was turning the presidency into a marketing pulpit.
"I consider it the president’s obligation to come in contact with the civil service," Vassiliou told Greek state TV. "I call this communication with youth. Some call it marketing. ... I call it the proper execution of the president's mission."
He also pushed through key reforms, including imposing a sales tax while slashing income taxes, streamlining a cumbersome civil service, establishing the first Cyprus university, and abolishing a state monopoly in electronic media. To make sure the world better understood the Cyprus peace process, he widely expanded a network of press offices at Cypriot diplomatic missions.
Through his tenure, the island's per capita gross domestic product almost doubled, culminating in possibly his most notable achievement as president — applying for full membership to the European Union, a goal achieved 13 years later.
Vassiliou lost the presidency in 1993 to Glafcos Clerides, who appointed his rival as Cyprus' chief negotiator with the EU in 1998. A decade later, Vassiliou headed a Greek Cypriot team negotiating EU matters during reunification talks. He remained politically active, founding a party of his own and being elected to the Cypriot legislature in 1996.
He authored several books on EU issues and Cypriot politics; was a member of several international bodies, including the Shimon Peres Institute of Peace; and received honors and decorations from countries such as France, Italy, Austria, Portugal and Egypt.
Apart from his wife, Vassiliou is also survived by two daughters and a son.
FILE -Democratic Presidential Candidate Bill Clinton, left, meets with President George Vassiliou of Cyprus at New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel, Aug. 9, 1992. (AP Photo/Mario Cabrera, File)
FILE -Cyprus President George Vassiliou, left, smiles as his son Evelthon, 17, is introduced to the daughter of Massachusetts Governor and Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis, Kara, 19, at the Statehouse in Boston on Aug. 3, 1988 as Dukakis, second from right looks on, during a visit by the Cyprus President to Boston. (AP Photo/Carol Francavilla, File)
