Poland rejects populism and xenophobia in favour of pro-Europe liberal conservatives

· Tusk government aims to join euro within five years
· Defeated leader's twin retains veto as president

Poland yesterday stepped into a new era of greater European integration, more influence abroad, and more tolerance and liberty at home in the wake of a surprisingly solid election victory by the post-Solidarity liberal conservatives of Donald Tusk's Civic Platform.

"A Platform Triumph", read the huge frontpage headline on the country's bestselling newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, celebrating the demise of the two-year experiment in isolationism, nationalism, and intolerance engineered by the outgoing prime minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, and twin brother Lech who remains in office as president until 2010.

"It was a plebiscite," wrote Stanislaw Kurski, the paper's deputy editor. "The Poles rejected populism, fear, and the playing of one social group against another. They rejected megalomania, arrogance, and anti-German phobias. They rejected blackmail, snooping, and provocation."

Sunday's turnout of almost 54% was the highest since the beginning of the modern democratic era in 1989, indicating Poles' awareness of the high stakes; Mr Tusk's Platform, taking 42% of the vote, fared better than any single party since 1989; where two extremist parties took 18% of the vote only two years ago, on Sunday they mustered merely 3% between them and failed to enter parliament.

The result puts Polish politics in the most coherent shape ever. The new parliament will see the dominant liberal conservatives with more than 40%, Mr Kaczynski's nationalist populism with around one third, and centre-left social democrats and former communists with 13%.

After a year in which Mr Kaczynski repeatedly sought to block and veto EU policy-making and made Polish diplomacy the laughing stock of the continent, the Tusk camp yesterday promptly signalled a sea change. Poland will be the first country to ratify the EU's new reform treaty, pledged Bronislaw Komorowski, a Platform deputy leader, while José Manuel Barroso, the European commission chief, singled out the "European spirit" of the Polish electorate. The new government will also loosen Mr Kaczynski's welfarism, embrace the free market, and pursue tighter fiscal policies aimed at entering the euro single currency within five years.

Mr Tusk is expected to form a coalition with the small Peasants' party which took 9% of the vote. Between them they will have a comfortable majority of 240 seats in the 460-seat Sejm or lower house. That, however, is less than the 60% they need to override vetoes on government legislation by President Kaczynski who can be expected to try to make life difficult for the new government.

Mr Komorowski also said a priority was to construct as broad as possible a coalition to defeat any Kaczynski vetoes, meaning that Mr Tusk is likely to offer the centre-left something in return for support.

Lena Kolarska-Bobinska, director of Warsaw's institute of public affairs, says that prime minister Kaczynski's model for Poland was Israel. He sought to turn Poland into a combative, nationalist, and aggressive place ruled by a siege mentality, surrounded by perceived enemies, and utterly committed to the closest possible security relationship with Washington.

Mr Tusk will be more demanding of the US and keen to reach a much smoother modus operandi with Berlin.

But senior Platform figures, such as Jan Rokita or Radek Sikorski, are also critical of the EU and hostile to Moscow. Mr Sikorski, tipped to be the new foreign minister, is pro-America but increasingly critical of the Bush administration and demands that the Pentagon supply Poland with $1bn (£492m) worth of missiles in return for being allowed to deploy its missile defence facilities in north-west Poland.

Mr Kaczynski has been a highly divisive figure and on Sunday became a casualty of his own talent for confrontation and polarisation. His power base is the small town and the countryside, the elderly, the less educated and the poor. On Sunday Poland's burgeoning middle class, the young, the successful, the cities, took revenge.

Guardian