A girl touches bollot box while a man is voting at a polling station during Polish general elections in Warsaw yesterday. Reuters

Opinion polls suggest the Civic Platform, a centre-right opposition party, will attract most support.

However, no party is likely to win outright which would lead to negotiations over a coalition in the new EU member nation. This election was called two years early after the last coalition collapsed.

The Platform has plans to speed up economic reform, pull Polish troops out of Iraq and rebuild relations with EU allies that have suffered under the nationalist brothers.

Polls before campaigning ended on Friday put Civic Platform between 4 and 17 points ahead of the ruling Law and Justice Party. They gave the opposition party up to 47 percent support.

Voting started at 0400 GMT yesterday morning. An electoral commission official said voting would be extended 20 minutes to 1820 GMT in some areas, and exit polls cannot be published until then.

The party of the 58-year-old Kaczynskis, Prime Minister Jaroslaw and President Lech, has run the country of 38 million people during two years of growing prosperity but constant political turbulence.

The Kaczynskis are suspicious of old foes Germany and Russia, and their relations with neighbours are strained.

"Very often we like to complain it's they who decide, they who argue, who govern, directing our complaints at unspecified 'they'. Today we decide who 'they' are," said Archbishop Jozef Zycinski after voting in the eastern city of Lublin.

Some 30 million Poles are eligible to vote. At stake are 460 seats in the lower house of parliament and 100 Senate seats.

Agencies

(China Daily 10/22/2007 page9)