Poland’s newly elected Parliament torpedoed a long-shot effort by right-wing forces on Monday to stay in power despite losing a general election, opening the way for the opposition leader, Donald Tusk, to take over as leader of the biggest and most populous country on Europe’s formerly communist eastern flank.
Legislators, as expected, rejected a new government proposed by the caretaker prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, whose party, Law and Justice, lost its parliamentary majority in an October election.
Mr. Morawiecki, who led Poland’s previous right-wing government, resigned after the election but was asked by Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, an ally of Law and Justice, to stay on in a caretaker capacity and to try to form a new government.
Opponents of Law and Justice denounced Mr. Duda’s move as a last-gasp attempt by the defeated party to prolong its rule and appoint allies to positions in state institutions and companies.
In a final, desperate effort to keep the opposition from taking over, a commission formed by t he outgoing government to investigate Russian influence late last month recommended that Mr. Tusk and other leading opposition figures not be allowed to hold positions responsible for state security.
The vote in Parliament on Monday, however, ended the defeated party’s efforts to remain in power and left Mr. Tusk, a former prime minister and leader of the main opposition party, Civic Coalition, poised to take leadership of a new government.
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