2014年经济学人 波兰政府 继图斯克之后（在线收听）

Poland's government

After Tusk

Donald Tusk's replacement has a chance to revive his party

THE choice of Donald Tusk, Poland's long-serving prime minister, as the next president of the European Council is rearranging Polish politics. He will be replaced by Ewa Kopacz, Speaker of the parliament. Ms Kopacz has two weeks to assemble a new cabinet and gain the approval of parliament, which should be easy. She has the opportunity for a “velvet cabinet reshuffle”, says Wojciech Szacki of Polityka Insight, a political-analysis firm. That gives her the chance to reverse the misfortunes of Civic Platform that have left the party lagging behind the right-wing Law and Justice party, led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

Civic Platform has appeared listless for months. It was rocked by the recent “waitergate” scandal, in which several senior ministers were illegally recorded in Warsaw restaurants and their indiscretions splashed in the newspapers. The halo of Mr Tusk's new job has already given Civic Platform a boost: one poll found it leaping by ten points to overtake Law and Justice, for the first time in a while.

The government has big gaps to fill. Mr Tusk will be joined in Brussels by his capable deputy, Elzbieta Bienkowska. After doing an excellent job of disbursing the billions of euros Poland gets from the European Union, she is to become European commissioner for the internal market. There is no obvious candidate to take over from her. There could be change at the foreign ministry, which Radek Sikorski has headed since 2007. He is said to be in the running for Speaker of parliament, but changing a well-regarded foreign minister in the middle of the Ukraine crisis may not seem wise. More certain to go is Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz, the interior minister, whose dinner-table talk made such lurid reading.

Ms Kopacz will have to hold Civic Platform together in the absence of Mr Tusk, who was one of its founders and has used a blend of charisma and ruthlessness to keep rivals in check. The party has several barons and there are ideological splits between conservatives and liberals. Ms Kopacz lacks Mr Tusk's charm, but she was an effective health minister, a job that is often a graveyard for ambitious politicians.

She also has at least one momentary advantage. Mr Kaczynski was caught flat-footed by Mr Tusk's promotion, seeming uncertain whether to congratulate him or denigrate his achievement. With a hand-kissing old-world approach to women, he has tended to be clumsy in attacking female rivals. Civic Platform's new hope is that it may win November's local elections. Next spring's presidential vote is a forgone conclusion, with the Civic Platform incumbent, Bronislaw Komorowski, likely to romp home. That gives Ms Kopacz just over a year to shore up her party before she tries for an unprecedented third general election victory.