ELECTIONS IN POLAND

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25083, 15 January 1947, Page 7

ELECTIONS IN POLAND

POLL ON JANUARY 19 PEASANT PARTY OPPOSING “DEMOCRATIC BLOC” LONDON, January 13. About 13,000,000 electors will vote for 444 deputies when Poland on January 19 has the last of the “free and unfettered” elections which the Allies proposed should be held at the end of the war, says Reuter’s correspondent m Warsaw. AR men and women over 21 are eligible to vote, except collaborators and “members of organisations tending to upset the democratic regime.” Votes will be cast for party lists, no: individual candidates, and they will be counted in an extremely complicate ted system of proportional representation. The result is expected on January 31. The election is a contest between the “democratic bloc” and the Polish Peasant Party. The programmes of the democratic bloc and the Peasant Party are similar, but the Peasant Party emphasises that it stands for civil liberties.

There are four main parties in the bloc. Two additional parties—a Work Party and a splinter group from the Peasant Party —-will join the bloc in Poland’s new western territories, but they will offer separate lists in old Poland. • Reuter’s correspondent in Warsaw says that 372 of the 144 deputies will be elected by the voters in the 52 constituencies. The remaining 72 will be elected on a national vote. The British Ambassador to Poland (Mr. Cavendish-Bentinck) arrived in London to-day to report on the Polish election campaign.