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WARSAW, April 6 (Xinhua) -- Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and Higher Education Jaroslaw Gowin resigned on Monday due to differences with the Law and Justice party(PiS) on whether to postpone the country's presidential elections.

Gowin's own Agreement party remains part of the coalition currently in power, with Gowin remaining its leader.

Gowin was the most vocal critic within the ruling coalition of the plan to go ahead with the presidential elections as originally planned on May 10. He has opposed plans to introduce exclusive postal voting in order to allow the elections to take place during the COVID-19 pandemic lock-down.

Gowin said at a press conference that while he will personally vote against letting the elections go ahead as scheduled, most Agreement MPs will vote in favor. "I have convinced most of my colleagues to give the proposal a chance," he said.

The Sejm (the lower house of the parliament)is scheduled to vote on the proposal later on Tuesday. Opposition groups heavily criticize the attempt to make major changes to electoral law a month before voting, while the Polish constitution stipulates meaningful changes can be made up until six months before the elections.

A parliamentary victory would still make a fully postal election challenging. If Sejm passes the bill, the opposition-controlled Senat (upper house) can hold it up for a month and request changes. Such changes, however, need in turn to be improved by the Sejm. The bill would then, at the earliest, be confirmed on May 7, three days before the elections.

A PiS-led government abolished postal voting altogether in 2018, but even before then, the possibility to vote by mail was strictly limited.

While polls show an overwhelming majority of Poles want the elections postponed, they also show that incumbent President Andrzej Duda, a former PiS MP, has built a significant gap with his rivals. Some polls suggest he would win outright in the first round, with over 50 percent of the vote.