Polish PM asks parliament for vote of confidence

Warsaw, June 26 (IANS) Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk Wednesday asked the Sejm (lower house of parliament) for a vote of confidence for his government.

He told MPs that Poland's interests could be jeopardised by the leaked tapes scandal, in which several government ministers' private, and sometimes compromising, conversations were illegally recorded and the tapes released to a Polish weekly, Xinhua reported.

"I have a simple plan that will largely depend on the house. We need certainty beyond Poland's borders that the Polish state is running smoothly and coping well also with this unusual, serious crisis; that on the eve of negotiations in Brussels, the Polish government has a mandate stemming from the elections and from a parliamentary majority," PM Tusk told MPs.

The prime minister pointed out that one effect of the leaked tapes scandal was the Polish government's diminished ability to influence how top European Union positions are filled. He added that the government would fight at the EU summit for specific regulations concerning an energy union.

"There can be no room for guesswork (as to whether) there is a government in Poland or whether it will fall at any minute," he said regarding the vote of confidence.

Tusk emphasised that "the real political problem" of the leaked recordings was that "a group of criminals (...) presumed to illegally record and eavesdrop, and then publish materials that are causing this earthquake."

The prime minister began his Sejm presentation of the leaked tapes scandal with an apology for "appalling, sometimes scandalous behaviour, language, inappropriate words" in the illegally recorded conversations of high officials, including ministers.

According to Tusk, the actions of state bodies following the covert recordings were published shows that "institutions responsible for legal order are prepared for prompt action".

Eavesdropping "without a given person's knowledge, recording and publishing such materials is a crime," the PM said. According to him, the dates of the recordings suggest that politicians were bugged for at least 18 months and that "tens or maybe even hundreds of people" were involved.

In the middle of June Polish weekly Wprost published illegal recordings of private conversations between Interior Minister Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz, and the President of the National Bank of Poland Marek Belka as well as between Andrzej Parafianowicz, former finance ministry official, and former minister of transport Slawomir Nowak.

On Monday a recorded conversation between Minister of Foreign Affairs Radoslaw Sikorski and former finance minister Jacek Rostowski, and another one between government Spokesperson Pawel Gras, Treasury Minister Wlodzimierz Karpinski, Deputy Treasury Minister Zdzislaw Gawlik and PKN Orlen President Jacek Krawiec were published by Wprost.