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By Compiled from Times wires
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 9, 2000
Poles re-elect Kwasniewski president
WARSAW, Poland -- Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski won a second term Sunday with 55 percent of the vote, according to partial returns, avoiding a runoff in Poland's third presidential election since shedding communism a decade ago.
Kwasniewski, a former communist, defeated 11 challengers, including legendary Solidarity founder Lech Walesa and a number of fringe candidates from the far right. Walesa, whom Kwasniewski ousted from the presidency in a close election in 1995, won just 0.9 percent of the vote.
Kwasniewski's closest challengers were independent economist Andrzej Olechowski, who had 18 percent of the vote, and the leader of the Solidarity bloc, Marian Krzaklewski, with 15 percent.
The first official returns were in line with the results of exit polls by the private PBS agency. Final results were expected Tuesday.
Kwasniewski, 46, once a sports minister in the old communist regime, successfully cast himself as a champion of average Poles who have struggled to cope with the painful shift to a market economy.
Though the right wing has tried to discredit him because of his communist past and his atheism in overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Poland, Kwasniewski's support spanned the political spectrum. It was the first presidential election won in the first round.
"This victory was not certain until the ballots were cast," a satisfied-appearing Kwasniewski told supporters who cheered and serenaded him at a Warsaw hotel. "But tonight, I can say that we won."
He said the biggest challenge of his second five-year term will be to ensure Poland's entrance into the European Union.
Conceding defeat, Krzaklewski said the right-wing Solidarity bloc must now consolidate to retain control of parliament in elections scheduled next year. "We must strengthen the Solidarity bloc," Krzaklewski said
Across town at the Soviet-style Palace of Culture, Olechowski congratulated the president. "Kwasniewski won impressive support of the majority of Poles," he said.
Walesa, who founded the small Christian Democracy of Poland party in 1997, acknowledged that his chances were negligible when he voted Sunday in Gdansk, birthplace of the Solidarity movement that toppled communism.
LITHUANIAN ELECTIONS: A leftist coalition headed by a former communist leader made a strong showing in Lithuanian parliamentary elections, appearing to easily surpass the ruling Conservatives, according to partial voting results.
The Social Democratic coalition, led by one-time Communist Party boss Algirdas Brazauskas, had won 33 percent of the vote with the ballots from 219 out of 2,027 polling stations counted, the election commission reported.
Conservatives had just 7 percent of the early vote. In 1996, they won more than 40 percent of the final vote.
FLEMISH ELECTIONS: Early results from Belgium's municipal and provincial elections Sunday showed a far-right bloc increasing its lead over mainstream parties in a major city and taking around 10 percent of the vote in the country's Dutch-speaking north.
The success of the Flemish Bloc -- which campaigns against immigration and is in favor of independence for the Dutch-speaking Flanders region -- could signal a far-right revival across Europe. It follows last year's legislative elections in Austria, which saw the far-right Freedom Party voted into government, and gains at the polls by other far-right parties.