Poland in a Crisis

"If there is no majority government, then early elections remain the only solution," said Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, quoted by Poland's PAP news agency.

"The aggression of the opposition makes it impossible to have a minority government," he added.

He said voters could be called to the polls in the autumn unless Andrzej Lepper's populist Samoobrona (Self-Defense) party changed its mind.

Samoobrona leader Lepper was fired on Monday evening after being caught up in an anti-corruption investigation.

"I offered Jaroslaw Kaczynski my resignation, while also warning that it would mean the end of the coalition government, but apparently the decision to sack me had already been made," Lepper said in an interview with channel TVN24.

Samoobrona and the far-right League of Polish Families (LPR) were junior coalition partners with Kaczynski's conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party.

Anti-corruption probe

Government spokesman Jan Dziedziczak announced that Lepper, who was also agriculture minister, had been fired amid an anti-corruption probe.

"The decision follows facts revealed in connection with the operations of the national anti-corruption bureau, related to a case of large-scale corruption," Dziedziczak said.

"Two people have been arrested in connection with the case," he said.

Lepper confirmed to TVN24 that anti-corruption investigators had searched the agriculture ministry and said one of his aides was detained.

Kaczynski later announced that sports minister Tomasz Lipiec, a member of the LPR, had also been sacked, and accused both men of graft.

"There are strong signs testifying to the fact that Andzrej Lepper and Tomasz Lipiec are implicated in criminal activities," Kaczynski told reporters, alleging that "bribes worth millions" were involved.

Attempts to bolster minority

Kaczynski's conservatives brought the rural-based Samoobrona and the ultra-Catholic LPR into government in May last year.

The move was meant to bolster the minority government of PiS, which narrowly won elections in September 2005 and had been relying on their tacit support.

Kaczynski has sacked Lepper before, after the two men logged horns last September over the 2007 budget and plans to send more Polish troops to Afghanistan.

But Kaczynski was forced to bring Lepper back into the cabinet in mid-October to end a three-week political crisis and stave off snap elections.

Before Monday's bust-up, the coalition controlled only 224 seats in Poland's 460-member parliament -- PiS has 149 seats, while Samoobrona holds 46 and the LPR 29.

Shaky alliances

The government has managed to stay in power thanks in part to divisions among opposition parties, which agree on little except that they dislike Poland's rulers.

The liberal Civic Platform (PO), with which PiS held fruitless coalition talks in 2005, has 131 seats, while the ex-communist Social Democrats have 55 and Samoobrona's main rival, the Polish Peasants' Party (PSL), has 25.

Smaller conservative and populist groups, plus independents, hold the rest.

Early elections are not in the interest of PiS, Samoobrona or the LPR, according to a survey released Friday by the CBOS polling institute.

It found that if elections were called immediately, PO would edge PiS with 27 percent of the vote to 25 percent.

Samoobrona would see its 2005 score slashed by half to six percent and the LPR, which received eight percent in the last elections, would not clear the five-percent threshold required for seats.

The Social Democrats would score a largely unchanged 12 percent and the PSL five percent, the poll found.