“I hope this decision doesn’t mean we will not have him in politics at all,” Minister of Administration and Digitalisation Andrzej Halicki told television channel TVN24.
"It’s a shame that he announced his decision in this way,” Halicki added.
Sikorski announced on Monday using Twitter that he will not run in the 25 October general elections.
“It was a shock for all of us,” the minister continued. “Sikorski was an important figure for Poland, esteemed in the world, I recall above all in his approach to ‘Eastern policy.’”
Sikorski had previously been foreign minister but resigned from the position of speaker of the Sejm, the lower house of parliament, following the release of sensitive documents related to the so-called finance tape affair.
“This is bad news for Poland,” Michał Kamiński, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office and fellow PO member, said.
“This is a politician with great potential and a person that we should not lose from Polish politics,” he added.
The head of the Kujawsko-Pomorski PO, where Sikorski was set to run in this year’s election, MP Tomasz Lenz, regretted the decision, but added that Sikorski, “as every MP, has the right to relinquish his position.”
Opposition voices
Witold Waszczykowski from the opposition Law and Justice (PiS), meanwhile, wasted no time in attacking the controversial Sikorski.
“Sikorski had been a burden for PO,” Waszczykowski told IAR news service. “PO knows about other illegal tape recordings with Sikorski. It had to end this way. Warsaw is full of gossip that there is another tape recording with Sikorski, and this time with a very rich and influential businessman," Waszczykowski added.
“For years he behaved in a brutal way and like a megalomaniac. He developed many enemies, he was a bad minister of foreign affairs and his downfall and political end is entirely deserved,” Waszczykowski said.
Jerzy Wenderlich from the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), a left of centre opposition party, said he did not believe this was the end of Sikorski’s political career.
“When I heard of his decision I shed no tears, because I didn’t believe he will be leaving politics. This is the end of his parliamentary career,” Wenderlich said.
Others disagreed. Rafał Chwedoruk from Warsaw University, for example, said this could signal the end of Sikorski’s political career in Poland for many years. Chwedoruk suggested that Sikorski’s career had been heavily dependent on the support of former PM and now president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, who left Poland for Brussels in late 2014. Chwedoruk noted that Sikorski had not developed his own support base within the party and that his position had always been weak. (jh)