Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Saturday warned his Civic Platform party against internal power struggles and arrogance that he suggested could lead the party to lose its footing. "Those who think that the party has become so strong that it can now split will end up in political hell," dpa cited Tusk as saying during a party convention in the capital Warsaw. Voters' trust is not perpetual and the thinking that "we are now allowed everything" could threaten future success, said Tusk, who was re-elected chairman of the centre-right party three months ago. With the election of Bronislaw Komorowski as president in July, Civil Platform now holds all of Poland's key political posts. But some leading members have recently criticised the state of the ruling party. Andrzej Halicki, the chairman of the parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, has said that Tusk is surrounded by "bootlickers." The popular Civil Platform delegate Janusz Palikot has indicated that he wants to found his own movement, saying that the party is to clerical and that reforms were not being implemented fast enough. But Tusk argued at the convention that only Civil Platform can prevent a comeback by the right-wing Law and Justice party of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who he said threatens to return Poland to "political chaos and radicalism." Kaczynski's party was in power from 2005 to 2007, a period that had featured fierce internal political conflicts and tensions with neighbouring Germany and Russia.
