Miller's crossing

摘要

The gods smiled on Leszek Miller, Poland's prime minister, when his helicopter crashed near Warsaw in December. Feeling, he said afterwards, "the touch of angel wings" around him, he survived the impact with minor back injuries, even making a brief appearance in a wheelchair at a European summit in Brussels a few days later. This week he emerged from a month's convalescence, marking the occasion with a reshuffle that included sacking his treasury minister. He pronounced himself a rested and refreshed man. He needs to be, given the challenges facing him. One recent poll has given Mr Miller's ruling socialist party, the SLD, only 17% support among voters—well behind the leading conservative opposition party, Civic Platform, and behind even a dangerously populist agrarian party, Samoo-brona (self-defence). With a general election looming next year, the possibility of another SLD victory now seems farfetched. The bigger question is whether the party might suffer a defeat so crushing as to finish it as a serious force, or at least to bring drastic changes, including the departure of Mr Miller's generation of ex-communists from its leadership.