The narrowest of wins in the Polish presidential election for the right-wing candidate, Karol Nawrocki (above) supported by the PiS (Law and Justice Party) over the Civic Coalition centrist candidate, Rafał Trzaskowski, has thrown Polish politics into even more confusion. The margin of victory could hardly be closer, 50.89% to 49.11%, and is hardly a mandate; more a recipe for turmoil.
Whilst PiS is a party in the more traditional sense, Donald Tusk’s Civil Coalition is an umbrella, mainly electoral alliance, stretching from the political centre to the moderate left. Tusk’s first year as PM has been hampered by constitutional wrangling with President Andrzej Duda. Though it is the parliament (Sejm) which has the power, nonetheless the presidency has limited delaying powers and Duda, a PiS stalwart, has been able to frustrate Tusk’s reforms.
Nawrocki vs Trzaskowski
The Civil Coalition candidate, Trzaskowski, could not have been more different than the eventual winner, Nawrocki. Trzaskowski is the son of a famous jazz musician, a former member of the European Parliament, an open supporter of women’s and gay rights, and an excellent linguist. He is the mayor of Warsaw. As a close associate of Prime Minister Donald Tusk he was an easy target as the supposed ‘elitist insider’ for the populist anti-establishment, Nawrocki. (It is a supreme irony that perhaps only in Poland could a party, PiS, closely following the regressive social policies of the hierarchical Catholic Church, be regarded as ‘anti-establishment’.)
Nawrocki is a pugnacious orator, much-published historian, keen amateur boxer, self-confessed football street brawler, and former security officer at a luxury hotel. He gained prominence as the head of the revisionist Institute of National Remembrance. He was carefully chosen by PiS party boss, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who has been chair of PiS since 2003. Kaczynski thought, rightly it seems, that a more robust and younger candidate would be a plus for his party, which needed to update its image after eight years in power – a reign that ended last year when Tusk (former president of the EU Council) became prime minister.
Poland’s presidential campaign
The presidential election was yet another re-run of the now familiar Polish and Central European divide, pro-EU versus Eurosceptic.
When PiS was in government they significantly raised pensions, and in the election campaign Nawrocki promised tax cuts and lower VAT. He also promised to cut energy costs by relying on Polish coal. But overall, Nawrocki’s campaign stressed the negative – anti-gay rights, anti-EU, anti-immigrants and against liberalising Poland’s restrictive abortion laws. In a cruel twist, the many Ukrainians who now live in Poland, having sought refuge from the Vladimir Putin’s war, have found themselves the recent target of anti-immigrant feeling. And as elsewhere, it has suited populist nationalists to deliberate conflate refugees, asylum seekers with immigrants.
On the one hand, Poland has generously taken in many refugees from Putin’s war and been an unswerving ally of Ukraine; on the other hand, the populists voiced the widespread criticism that the Ukrainians receive social support at the expense of native Poles. It is a cry heard with increasing clamour throughout Europe and beyond.
The populist anti-EU stance defies logic and reality. Poland is much admired as a growing economic power. Much of it is fuelled by its access to the EU’s open market, remittances from Poles, who have found employment for their energies and skills in the wider Europe, and from direct EU grants which have dramatically improved Poland’s once creaking transport and information infrastructure.
Trzaskowski found himself in the same dilemma as the Remain campaigners in the British referendum, struggling to stress the benefits of Polish membership of the EU when faced with the accusation of ceding sovereignty to Brussels. Support for the EU’s shared ‘green agenda’ of cutting carbon emissions was hard to square with Poland’s coal-based energy production and coal remains a major export earner. Trzaskowski’s progressive views on equality and collective action on climate change played well with the urban progressive professionals, but had the opposite effect in the rural areas where an increasingly regressive Catholic Church is stronger.
The electoral results map shows quite distinct voting disparities between town and country, West and East Poland. Those areas nearer the western border and better links western Europe provided the bulk of Trzaskowski’s vote. But what for some was liberation, was for others a threat, and the totals are almost equal in voting power.
External influence on Poland’s election
New to this election was the infusion of outside influence – not only from other populists in Central Europe (Hungary, Austria and Slovakia) but also from the USA in the form of CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference). Once a fringe of the Republican right but now under an endorsement from Donald Trump, CPAC is seeking to stretch its influence beyond the USA to Europe.
CPAC’s annual event this year took place in Warsaw during the election campaign. It was highlighted by the presence of Trump’s homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem. Trump himself granted Nawrocki a White House interview and endorsement. Of course, Trump’s strategy is to weaken the EU as much as supporting Polish nationalism. ‘Divide and rule’ is once more in fashion among would-be dictators.
Navrocki’s campaign even secured the dubious endorsement of former UK prime minister Liz Truss, who managed to crash the British economy in her (thankfully brief) 40 days in No 10, Downing Street.
Polish politics
Many people – from visitors, observers and journalists to friends and family – testify to the dangerous bitterness in Polish politics.
When I was in Warsaw in March, I asked Adam Michnik, the veteran Solidarity campaigner, and editor of the liberal newspaper Tygodnik Powszechny, whether there was hope that the obvious external threat from Russia, would bring Poles together. He answered wryly “that’s the million dollar question”.
The immediate answer in the reaction to the presidential election seems to be ‘no’.
A joke used to be told about the esteemed Cardinal Wyszynski, the pillar of Catholic resistance to the Polish Communist regime, but who gradually came to a truce of mutual recognition. The Cardinal asks God ‘Will Poland ever be rewarded for its piety by having a Polish Pope?’, to which God replied ‘Yes, but not in your lifetime’ (which actually came true in the personage of John Paul II). The Cardinal asked further ‘and will Poland ever be a stable democratic country?’ – to which God replied ‘Yes, but not in my lifetime’.
In the meantime, Poland now lies at the epicentre of European politics. It has the potential –and in some people’s eyes the chance – to be a major player in the EU to offset the Franco-German duopoly. Or, it could regress into the isolation of a relatively small state, more certain of what it is against than what it is for.
