Polish Politics - Election 2023
Poland braced for general elections on 15 October 2023. As the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party was seeking a third term, it must ensure that the problems and concerns of its constituency are addressed. The next general election was scheduled for this autumn. The exact date would be be set by President Andrzej Duda , with October 15 the earliest constitutionally possible date, according to news outlets.
The Polish opposition appeared to be set to enter the parliamentary election race divided into three separate blocs. In February 2023, Poland's four main opposition parties, including Poland 2050 and the PSL, agreed to join forces in the race for the Senate, the upper house. The upper house is less powerful than the lower chamber, but it can delay or amend legislation. The Sejm, the lower house, needs to muster an absolute majority to override Senate amendments.
Poland is a republic with a multiparty democracy. The bicameral parliament consists of an upper house (Senate) and a powerful lower house (Sejm). The president and the Council of Ministers headed by the prime minister share executive power. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe found the July 2020 presidential election was administered professionally despite legal uncertainty during the electoral process due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rescheduling of the election to a later date. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe noted that there was overall confidence in the administration of the October 2019 parliamentary election.
Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: problems with the independence of the judiciary; restrictions on freedom of expression including criminal defamation and offending religious sentiment laws; reports of mistreatment of irregular migrants from third countries; substantial barriers to accessing sexual and reproductive health services; crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting members of ethnic minorities, and crimes motivated by antisemitism.
The government continued to implement judiciary-related measures that drew strong criticism from the European Commission, some legal experts, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and international organizations. The government argued reforms were necessary to improve efficiency in the judicial system and accountability. Some legal experts and human rights groups expressed concern that the government’s ability to transfer judges without their consent could be used to punish or deter certain rulings and erode judicial independence. Some legal experts and human rights groups expressed concern that the same individual held the position of minister of justice and prosecutor general, allowing that individual to have authority for personnel matters for both judges and prosecutors.
An independent media, an effective judiciary, and a functioning democratic political system combined to promote freedom of expression, including for members of the media. The law requires that all broadcasts “respect the religious feelings of the audiences and, in particular, respect the Christian system of values.” According to the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, a considerable number of defamation and public insult cases, especially with respect to offending religious sentiment, posed a real risk of limiting freedom of expression and stifling free public debate.
Defamation by print and broadcast journalists was a criminal offense punishable by up to a one-year prison term. Defamation outside media was punishable by a fine and community service. In addition to defamation laws, laws cover public insult or slander of the president, members of parliament, government ministers and other public officials, the nation, foreign heads of state and ambassadors, and private entities and persons, as well as insult or destruction of the national emblem, the flag, other state symbols, monuments, and sites that commemorate historical events or persons. The criminal code also criminalizes offending religious sentiment by publicly insulting an object of religious worship or a place dedicated to public observance of religious services.
According to a report of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on the first round of the 2020 presidential election, the election campaign was characterized by “negative and intolerant rhetoric further polarizing an already adversarial political environment.” It also stated the public broadcaster “failed to ensure balanced and impartial coverage, and rather served as a campaign tool for the incumbent.” The OSCE noted that the second round of the presidential election was well managed, and candidates were “able to campaign freely in a competitive runoff, but hostility, threats against media, intolerant rhetoric, and cases of misuse of state resources detracted from the process. The polarized media environment, and particularly the biased coverage by the public broadcaster, remained a serious concern.”
According to the OSCE report, the 2019 parliamentary elections were well prepared and there was overall confidence in the election administration, but media bias – particularly in the public media – and intolerant rhetoric in the campaign, including instances of nationalist and homophobic rhetoric, were of significant concern.
Poland's governing conservatives in March 2023 launched an effort to win a third consecutive term in power, starting a nationwide tour to rally voters ahead of the elections and proposing a raft of new policies “to make Poland stronger and secure.” The ruling conservatives in 2019 won a convincing victory over opposition parties at the ballot box, securing a second term in power. They maintained a majority in the 460-seat lower house, but narrowly lost control of the 100-seat upper house, the Senate.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of Poland's ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, said this year's parliamentary elections would be about the country's independence and not being subordinate to Germany. Speaking in an interview with the Sieci weekly, Kaczynski said the vote would also be about the "socio-economic development model," arguing that the opposition wanted to return to the old system and send money "to where it went before.... It will be an election about Polish independence," Kaczynski said. "But also about the socio-economic model of development."
"Today it is an election between a truly independent, secure, militarily strong, ambitious, developing Poland, and that independence being lost, exploited, led through various crazy ideologies to a slowdown of development, subjugation to Germany." Kaczynski said if the opposition won the elections they would scupper the current government's pro-family and pro-social programmes."The aim after all is to return to the system that was (before)," he said. "And to direct money to those places where it flowed earlier. Specifically, where it was embezzled."
Polish political forces, including the ruling party, should take into account the public mood, for example, the latest opinion polls which show that Poles are against the participation of their country in the Russo-Ukrainian armed conflict.
In December 2022, Kantar Public (Mantle Polska sp. z o.o.) conducted an opinion poll titled “Poles on development assistance” which included a set of questions about the respondents’ attitude towards assistance to war-affected Ukraine. According to 50% of the respondents, African countries should be the main direction of Poland’s assistance. Considerably fewer people are of the opinion that Polish support should be aimed at Eastern neighbours (26%), and nearly all respondents in this group pointed to Ukraine (99%).
According to the poll, 71% of the respondents think that Poland should support Ukraine as the latter was in a war situation. The opposite view was held by 18% of Poles. Young people with higher education are more likely to be convinced of the need to provide assistance. Those who disagree are usually aged 30-39 and elderly people, as well as inhabitants of the largest cities. The respondents who believe that Poland should support Ukraine argue that by helping the country Poland improves it own security (56%) and that Poland had a moral obligation to help Poland's neighbour (44%). The opponents think that Poland should solve its own problems first (43%) and that Poland was too poor to help others (41%). The majority of those surveyed (54%) believe that Poland’s assistance to Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees would be beneficial for Poland as a country in the long run. More than half of the respondents would support the decision to allocate additional funds to assist Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees.
A March 2023 multi-country poll for ECFR suggested that Europeans had come closer together in their support for Ukraine. Among the northern and eastern hawks (Estonia, Poland, Denmark, and Great Britain), most people strongly support Kyiv’s objectives in the war. For people in Great Britain, Denmark, Poland, Estonia, and Germany, it was clear that the war has demonstrated Russia’s weakness. For example, in their strong support for supporting Ukraine in regaining all of its territory, voters of PiS (which was united with all the other major Polish parties on this point) by 62 to 18 percent.
In response to the extraordinary inflow of refugees from Ukraine, on March 12, President Andrzej Duda signed a law on assistance to Ukrainian citizens in connection with armed conflict, a significant step to ensure their rights and access to services were protected in Poland. The new regulations entered into force the same day and were retroactively applied from February 24. The law guaranteed the legality of stay for Ukrainian citizens for up to 18 months, as well as spouses without Ukrainian citizenship, who had entered Poland from Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian invasion. Children born in Poland to Ukrainian women who fled the war were also granted legal status. Poland has been the largest refugee host since the Ukraine crisis began in February 2022.
Two Polish opposition groupings struck a coalition agreement ahead of parliamentary elections in the autumn, aiming to offer voters an alternative to both the current and previous governments. The centre-right Poland 2050 grouping and the rural-based Polish People's Party (PSL) announced the deal on 15 May 2023. Poland 2050 leader Szymon Holownia and PSL chief Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz told a news conference in Warsaw that their groups would contest the elections together as "The Third Way - Poland 2050 and PSL" electoral alliance. Holownia argues that Polish opposition groups must avoid forming a single electoral alliance to stand a chance of defeating the ruling conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party at the ballot box. "We'll only remove PiS from power if people are allowed to make a choice" between various opposition groupings, he said.
The two groups in March 2023 launched a joint tour of the country ahead of the autumn's elections, promoting “a shared list of 21 policy issues” they pledged to resolve after taking power. The "21 policy issues" include "reducing the influence of party officials over the state," restoring the rule of law, increasing pay for teachers, and relaxing abortion rules, followed by a referendum on abortion rights, the PAP news agency reported.
An enormous anti-government march took place in Poland's capital 04 June 2023, with citizens traveling from across the country to voice their anger at a right-wing administration that has eroded democratic norms and created fears the nation was following Hungary and Turkey down the path to autocracy. The local government in Warsaw estimated that 500,000 people joined the march, which was led by the opposition party to which the city's mayor, Rafal Trzaskowski, belongs. Former President Lech Walesa, the leader of the Solidarity movement that played a historic role in toppling communism in Poland, stood on a stage with the leader of the opposition Civic Platform party, former Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
Critics point mainly to the ruling Law and Justice party's step-by-step takeover of the judiciary and media. It uses state media for heavy-handed propaganda to tarnish opponents. Law and Justice also tapped into animosity against minorities, particularly LGBTQ+ people, whose struggle for rights the party depicts as a threat to families and national identity. A clampdown on abortion rights has triggered mass protests.
Tusk’s Civic Platform, a centrist and pro-European party, had trailed behind Law and Justice in polls. However, the passage of a controversial law in May 2023 appeared to mobilize greater support for Tusk.
The new law allowed for the creation of a commission to investigate Russian influence in Poland. Critics argue that the commission would have unconstitutional powers, including the capacity to exclude officials from public life for a decade. They fear it would be used by the ruling party to remove Tusk and other opponents from public life. Amid uproar in Poland and criticism from the U.S. and the EU, President Andrzej Duda, who signed the law on May 29, proposed amendments to it on 02 June 2023. In the meantime, the law would take effect with no guarantees lawmakers in parliament would weaken the commission's powers.
Polls have shown that PiS, in power since 2015, has maintained a narrow lead over the largest opposition party, the liberal Civic Platform (PO) headed by Donald Tusk, a former Polish prime minister and former president of the European Council. However, even if the winner of the 2015 and 2019 elections manages what would be an unprecedented third victory in a row, it was unlikely to have an overall majority, opening the possibility of a coalition with the far-right Confederation party. PiS had centerd its campaign around an increase in payments under its flagship child benefit policy, while stressing that it would take a tough line on border security and criticising what it has said was PO’s subservient approach to relations with the EU and Germany.
PO said removing PiS from government was necessary to unblock EU funds that have been frozen due to a dispute over the rule of law, and to reverse changes to the judiciary and state media which critics believed have eroded democratic standards in the country. The party has seen its support grow in recent months, but this has come mostly at the expense of other opposition parties.
While Poland’s pro-Ukrainian stance had appeared steadfast, in September, Kyiv and Warsaw traded jabs over the import of Ukrainian grain. The dispute emerged after the EU decided to lift a ban on such imports into the common European market. Warsaw indicated that it wanted to reinstate the ban in order to protect the interests of Polish farmers, whose profits are threatened by the lower prices of Ukrainian grain. Kyiv criticised these protectionist policies and said they work in favour of Russia.
The dispute escalated into a full-blown diplomatic crisis, with Poland announcing that it would stop supplying weapons to Ukraine and threatening to ban other imports from its neighbour. The hostile rhetoric by the Polish government may indicate PiS’s desire to secure the support of rural and far-right voters in order to improve its chances of winning an effective majority at the polls. In this context – and given Poles’ longstanding and deep-seated aversion towards Russia – the disagreement with Kyiv was unlikely to result in a dramatic turnaround in Polish foreign policy. But the spat with Ukraine could see the erosion of trust between the two countries, weakening the EU’s common stance against Russia. It could have negative consequences for Kyiv financially, as well as politically and strategically, should it continue.
In principle, Poland's parliamentary election on October 15 had yielded a clear result: The democratic opposition led by liberal-conservative Donald Tusk, made up of three party groups — the centrist Civic Coalition (KO), the center-right Third Way (Trzecia Droga), The New Left (Lewica) — together won 248 seats in the new parliament. The threshold for an absolute majority was 231 votes. The national-conservative PiS Party, which has been the ruling party for eight years, indeed received the largest share of the vote (35.4%). It won, however, only 194 mandates and cannot continue governing without a coalition partner. After an election, the president has no compulsory obligation to give the strongest faction the first chance to form a government, according to the Polish constitution.
Poland's President Andrzej Duda on 06 November 2023 unexpectedly revealed the name of the politician who, on his behalf, was to try and form the new government. "Following a calm analysis and consultations I have decided to task Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki with the mission of forming a government," Duda said, before justifying his decision: "I decided to continue the good parliamentary tradition according to which the winning party is the first to be given the opportunity to form a government."
The moribund attempt at forming a new PiS government served the purpose of "building the myth of a stolen victory," Agnieszka Dlugosz wrote in the weekly news magazine Newsweek Polska. The myth, she continued, was to help PiS and its leader, Jaroslav Kaczynski, retake power. In an interview with the liberal daily Gazeta Wyborcza, sociologist Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer said: "Duda has put his personal career above the interests of the country. He has toed the party line."
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