Poles are electing their president this Sunday. Or maybe they aren't.

Just four days ahead of the official date, the election is in legal and logistical limbo, as the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party is opposed to calling a state of emergency due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic that would postpone the vote until safer times.

Instead, PiS has pushed for a postal vote-only election, a solution that poses a number of legal and logistical challenges and is nearly certain not to happen on May 10. 

That is the current state of play after the opposition-held Senate rejected the bill, passed in the lower house — where PiS has a majority — to carry out the election exclusively via postal vote. The lower house is due to vote on the Senate’s decision either today or on Thursday.

Assuming PiS wins the vote in the lower house, it will likely want to move the election date to May 17 or May 23 in order to gain more time to organise the postal vote for some 30mn voters. 

Some constitutionalists say, however, that the May 10 date must not be changed and doing so is illegal, even if the bill just rejected by the Senate does offer that leeway. 

PiS cannot be sure of the vote's result. A number of MPs from PiS’s junior coalition partner, the conservative party Alliance, are opposed to the May election on the grounds it could set back gains Poland has made fighting the coronavirus.

The Alliance needs just five MPs of the 18 it has to side with the opposition and cancel the May vote. That would push PiS to consider alternative scenarios, such as asking the Constitutional Tribunal to issue an opinion on whether the election could be postponed without having to call a state of emergency.

The tribunal – which PiS stacked with loyalists – is expected to rule in line with the ruling party’s interests.

That could plunge Poland into a still deeper political chaos while the country is still struggling to contain the spread of the coronavirus. The government has begun a gradual reopening of the economy, badly battered by the pandemic and the measures to contain it.

The plethora of legal problems plaguing the election could lead to legal challenges to the election’s results and dent the legitimacy of the new president. 

The incumbent Andrzej Duda, an unwavering ally of PiS, is likely to win over 50% of the vote if the election is held in May and the turnout is expectedly low because of people’s fear of the coronavirus.

PiS is wary of moving the election, fearing the inevitable economic crisis brought about by the pandemic will diminish Duda’s chances. Without a majority to overturn a presidential veto, PiS needs a friendly head of state to be able to govern effectively.

Poland had just over 14,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus as of Tuesday evening, including 698 deaths. The peak of the pandemic has so far eluded Poland although an early lockdown seems to have reduced the overall number of cases and deaths to numbers manageable by the country's underfunded and understaffed healthcare service.