Polish government change in the making

Poland’s President Bronislaw Komorowski will designate lower house Sejm Speaker Ewa Kopacz as Prime Minister on Monday, September 15 and swear in her new government on September 22, the head of President’s press office Joanna Trzaska-Wieczorek told reporters on Friday.
Kopacz is to succeed Donald Tusk, who after seven years in the office, handed in his resignation on Tuesday, to take up a job of the next European Council President as of December 1. The move automatically leads to the resignation of the entire cabinet.
The official candidate of the governing coalition of Civic Platform (PO) and Polish People’s party (PSL) is lower house Sejm Speaker Ewa Kopacz, a former pediatrician and health minister, has already been endorsed by the president, who cited the need to assure political stability. She is to become Poland’s second female prime minister after Hanna Suchocka, who served in the early 1990s.
On Friday morning Kopacz presented to President Komorowski her rough concept of how the new cabinet would look, vowed she could be ready with the constitutional two-week deadline to form a government and that the President would be the first to learn of her personnel decisions.
Poland’s major dailies present their, sometimes conflicting, scenarios for the upcoming government line-up. The daily Rzeczpospolita writes the government reshuffle under Kopacz will “not be as revolutionary” as the incumbent PM indicated, while Gazeta Wyborcza sources say that Kopacz will like to differentiate herself from Tusk by a major reshuffle. In personnel speculation, Polska The Times daily writes Kopacz will propose that Defense Minister Tomasz Siemoniak will become the next deputy PM, and changes will also include the Finance and Interior Ministries.
Gazeta Wyborcza’s front page focuses on Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, who reportedly accepted the proposal to become Parliamentary Speaker, recommending former Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski as new Foreign Minister. However, Sikorski may remain at his post, Rzeczpospolita writes.