Donald Tusk, who heads Poland’s largest opposition party, the Civic Platform (PO), made the appeal at a press conference in parliament on Friday, state news agency PAP reported.
The appeal came after Polish lawmakers on Thursday approved changes to the country's election law, designed to increase voter participation and expand access to polling stations, according to the ruling conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party.
Tusk, a former Polish prime minister and European Council president, said the governing conservatives were “afraid of electoral defeat” and accused the PiS party of “seeking various means to distort the results.”
He added: “Whoever changes the rules of the game … just before the elections, is in fact violating the basic principles of democracy.”
‘Huge social campaign to monitor elections’
Tusk declared: “We will respond to these attempts to undermine the rules of the electoral game, to the threat of manipulation and voting fraud, by launching a huge civic, social campaign to effectively monitor the elections.”
He told reporters that “if Law and Justice is prepared to manipulate electoral law to enhance its chances of winning the election, then … the growing fears that they are also ready to rig the election, sadly, are increasingly justified.”
The proposed changes to electoral law adopted by Poland's lower house, the Sejm, on Thursday require municipalities without sufficient public transport to provide voters with free transportation to polling stations on election day, according to officials.
The amendment also provides for the creation of some 6,000 new polling stations and the establishment of a nationwide Central Electoral Register, the PAP news agency reported.
The bill now heads to the Senate, the upper house, for further consideration.
Poles will go to the ballot box this autumn to elect a 460-member lower house, the Sejm, and a 100-seat Senate.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, rp.pl