Ruling Party Leader Could Return To Cabinet To Centralise Pre-Election Decision-Making

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced that the political committee of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party will discuss tomorrow whether its leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski should return to Cabinet. Any decisions on the matter will be communicated thereafter.

• This comes after PiS caucus leader Ryszard Terlecki told reporters that Kaczynski's return to Cabinet is not a done deal but cannot be ruled out. Terlecki said that it would help discipline the Cabinet, strengthen the position of the Prime Minister and improve coordination between ministries in the lead-up to the upcoming general election.
• Gazeta.pl and Wirtualna Polska ran source reports pointing to the potential for Kaczynski to enter Cabinet as Deputy Prime Minister. According to these reports, current Deputy Prime Ministers (Blaszczak, Sasin, Glinski and Kowalczyk) would be demoted to the rank of regular Ministers, which would halt their factional ambitions and empower the Prime Minister.
• Kaczynski has generally avoided holding a Cabinet portfolio throughout his political career, apart from his one-year stint as Prime Minister (2006-07) and a two-year stint as Deputy Prime Minister (2020-22). It is widely acknowledged that he prefers to focus on party politics and on either occasion entered the executive to defuse factional tensions within his political camp.
• Terlecki also confirmed that PiS's parliamentary caucus will convene tonight and its leader will attend the meeting. Kaczynski is expected to try and mobilise his party to focus on the election, which is expected to be a tight race. His activities come on the back of disappointment with failure to engineer meaningful gains in opinion polls, with PiS's campaign officials coming under growing criticism.