Founder of Poland’s opposition Nowoczesna party quits
PR dla Zagranicy
Paweł Kononczuk
11.05.2018 16:02
The founder and former leader of Poland’s economically liberal opposition Nowoczesna (Modern) party said on Friday that he was leaving the grouping.
Ryszard Petru walks. Photo: PAP/Jacek Turczyk
"I cannot take responsibility for a party over which I have no influence," Ryszard Petru told journalists.
Nowoczesna late last year elected Katarzyna Lubnauer as its leader, ousting Petru from the post.
Lubnauer said at the time that there was a “strong need for change” both within her party and among the Polish opposition as a whole.
Petru, an economist, founded Nowoczesna in May 2015, just a few months before Poland’s parliamentary elections that year.
His party won 7.6 percent of the vote, which resulted in Nowoczesna taking 28 seats in the 460-member lower house of parliament, a major success for a new grouping.
Nowoczesna’s approval ratings later dropped and a number of its MPs quit the party.
(pk/gs)
Source: IAR/PAP