Poland's ruling Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) split on Friday, increasing the pressure on unpopular Prime Minister Leszek Miller to resign and pave the way for a government revamp.
About 20 of the SLD's 192 parliamentary deputies, led by lower house speaker Marek Borowski, announced they were forming a new party, the Social Democracy of Poland, to offer Poles a new, credible alternative on the left.
The rebels said they could continue supporting the SLD in parliament if their old colleagues dumped Miller and agreed to a cabinet revamp ahead of Poland's European Union entry in May.
Otherwise, the new party said it would support opposition calls for early polls, which could take place together with elections to the European Parliament in June.
"If there is a reconstruction of the government, we are ready to support it although under certain conditions," Borowski told reporters.
The long brewing crisis inside the SLD exploded just as Miller attended a European Union summit in Brussels. Amid growing speculation he will resign as soon as this weekend, at a meeting of the SLD's national council, Miller said he would hold a news conference with the president on his return to Poland later on Friday to discuss the political crisis.
Analysts say Borowski's new grouping stands a good chance of attracting more defectors in the coming days as opinion polls show left-leaning Poles crave a new force on the left to replace the scandal-ridden and demoralised SLD.
Support for the SLD plunged to less than 10 percent from 42 percent at 2001 elections. Its voters have switched to either centrist liberals or anti-European populists led by pig farmer Andrzej Lepper.
Borowski lashed out at his old party, which he helped to form in 1989 from the ashes of the disbanded communist party, for failing to purge its ranks of those involved in sleaze.
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