WARSAW (AFP) – Poland veered to the right yesterday after voters opted for change in weekend general elections and handed a conservative coalition a parliamentary majority and a ticket to reform the new EU member.

With 90 per cent of the votes counted from Sunday’s election, the conservative, Catholic Law and Justice party (PiS) was shown to have reaped just under 27 per cent of the vote, and the free-market Civic Platform slightly more than 24 per cent.

The tally gave the two parties, which have already begun talks to form a coalition to rule Poland and cast off the legacy of communism, 285 seats in the 460-seat parliament, or a majority of around two-thirds.

Both PiS and PO want to trim the fat from the Polish administration, ease the legal backlog, and reform the social security and health systems.

But their broadly different economic agendas, which sparked public rows between the two parties before the election, have raised fears that a PiS-PO coalition will be difficult. With PiS reaping more votes than any other party in the running, it has the right to choose who will become Poland’s next prime minister. PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski has said he would take on the challenge, on one condition.

If his twin brother Lech wins the presidential election next month, in which he is running against the Civic Platform’s Donald Tusk, Jaroslaw Kaczynski would not become prime minister.

“If my brother wins, I will be obliged to refuse the post of prime minister. It would be unacceptable to Poles for two brothers to hold the two main government posts in the country,” he told the Rzeczpospolita newspaper.