Polish PM warns of political gridlock, mulls election

WARSAW (Reuters) - Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said on Tuesday he may look into calling early elections if a vote to pick a new parliament speaker gets bogged down by political infighting.

"We are not considering this scenario at the moment," Kaczynski told public radio when asked if he was planning early elections in June.

"But if some serious crisis occurs, like the inability to pick a speaker or vote out the old speaker, if the parliament cannot function, then we'll have to make the decision," Kaczynski said.

Parliamentary elections do not need to be held until 2009.

His comments were seen as a veiled warning to his junior coalition partners to toe the line given support has previously been withheld ahead of crucial votes in order to leverage political concessions, such as government appointments.

Kaczynski wants to replace the current speaker Marek Jurek because Jurek is no longer a member of the government after quitting the prime minister's Law and Justice party this month after a row over proposed constitutional changes on abortion.

While Kaczynski's coalition enjoys a slim majority and should in theory be able to win a vote to replace Jurek -- expected sometime this week -- the support of the junior partners is not a foregone conclusion.

Opinion polls on Saturday showed backing for the conservative Law and Justice party had dropped to 19 percent from 23-25 percent. It was the first survey taken since five former Law and Justice deputies led by Jurek founded a new party, the Right Wing of the Republic, which polled seven percent support.

Law and Justice risks seeing support dwindle and their three-party coalition lose its majority in parliament and the party's spokesman said on Monday an early election could be the best way to halt the downward trend.

A senior Law and Justice source told Reuters on Monday that Kaczynski favored calling a snap poll, but that most of the party's deputies opposed it.

Law and Justice won 27 percent of the vote in 2005 elections and went on to form a coalition with two fringe parties, the nationalist League of Polish Families and leftist Self-defence.