Poland's ex-communist SLD party appeared poised for victory in Sunday's legislative elections with final polls indicating it would crush the conservative Solidarity-AWS government.
Final public opinion polls showed the ex-communist Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) and its small Labour Union (UP) ally with between 46 and 48 percent of the vote, enough to take a majority of the 460 seats in the lower chamber of parliament and pursue unhindered its goal of Poland's quick entry into the European Union.
"It is during the next two or three years that the most important issues for the lives of future generations of Poles will be decided, particularly Poland's entry into the European Union," said Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, the SLD's candidate for foreign minister.
"For that reason we need a strong government," he told journalists after casting his ballot.
Leszek Miller, the SLD leader who will likely become prime minister, expressed confidence in the party's victory.
"I don't think there will be much difference between the result of voting and the polls of two days ago," Miller told journalists after casting his ballot in the central city of Lodz.
A poll earlier in the week, however, put the support for his party at 43 percent, short of that needed for a majority of seats and would force it into difficult alliances.
Thirty percent of Poland's 29 million eligible voters had cast ballots by 3:00 pm (1300 GMT), PAP news agency reported citing unofficial sources.
The national election commission is not allowed to release voter turnout figures before the country's 25,000 polling stations close at 8:00 pm (1800 GMT).
According to final opinion polls taken before election day around 60 percent of country's 29 million eligible voters intended to cast ballots.
Preliminary results based on exit polls were expected shortly after the voting booths close.
Final polls also forecast stunning gains by parties hostile to Poland's joining the EU, which could come as soon as 2004.
"I am nervously waiting for the results because there is a risk of surprises," President Aleksander Kwasniewski told journalists after casting his ballot.
The radical farmers party Samooborona (Selfdefense), which led strikes that paralyzed the country for several weeks in 1999, may take up to nine percent of the vote, while the Catholic ultra-nationalist Polish Family League could garner five percent.
Together with the Polish Peasants Party, which is expected to get 11 percent of the vote and is against compromises in agriculture in EU talks, the EU-skeptic bloc in the new parliament may total one quarter of the seats.
Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek's conservative Catholic Solidarity-AWS was fighting for its political survival Sunday, with polls showing it likely to fail to garner the eight percent of votes that coalitions need to win seats in the lower chamber of parliament.
Voters have expressed frustration with what they saw as a deterioration of the social welfare system under Solidarity-AWS and corruption scandals that have claimed several top officials.
Mieczyslaw, a 76-year-old retired railway worker said he had been a loyal Solidarity supporter but voted Sunday for the SLD for the first time in his life "because I could not bring myself to vote for those thieves who couldn't control the corrupt who raked in millions of zlotys while society suffered. Solidarity is finished."
A centrist liberal newcomer, Civic Platform (PO), only founded at the beginning of this year, looks set to pick up frustrated center-right voters and win around 14 percent support.
The parliament, elected for a four-year term, also includes a 100-member Senate which polls showed the SLD will likely dominate with two-thirds of the seats -- WARSAW (AFP)
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