Poland’s citizens, including many of its women and young people, headed “in droves” to the polling booths on Sunday, 15 October 2023, to cast their votes for the country’s bicameral legislature, which consists of a 460-seat lower chamber, the Sejm, and a 100-seat upper chamber, the Senate. The turnout of 74.4 per cent far exceeded that of the previous high of 63 per cent in the June 1989 elections, when Solidarity (Solidarnosc) swept into power, thereby ending Communist rule. Monitors from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) observed that that although candidates had been allowed to campaign freely in 2023, the incumbent party had an unfair advantage through its domination of the state broadcast media.
The ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS, Prawo i Sprawiedliwość) lost 41 seats, but still ended up as the single largest party, with 194 seats in the lower chamber, while falling short of the 231 seats required for a ruling majority. The three mainstream opposition parties, the centrist Civic Coalition (KO, Koalicja Obywatelska), the centre-right Third Way (TD, Trzecia Droga) coalition, and the left-wing The Left party (Lewica) secured 157 (30.70 per cent), 65 (14.40 per cent), and 26 (8.61 per cent) seats, respectively, while the far-right Confederation (Konfederacja) gained only 18 (7.16 per cent). President Andrzej Duda, himself a PiS member, now has up to 30 days from the proclamation of the election results to call the first session of the new parliament and to name a new prime minister. It seems likely that Donald Tusk, leader of the Civic Coalition, will take over that role as leader of a three-party coalition. As a former prime minister (2007-2014) and president of European Council (2014 – 2019) he is well-qualified for this position.
The right-wing, populist, conservative, nationalist, and nativist PiS was founded by the Kaczynski brothers in 2001 and has been in power ever since 2015. Under PiS leadership, Poland has steadily veered further to the right. The party previously ran the government from 2005 to 2007 and also occupied the presidency from 2005 to 2010. President Lech Kaczynski was killed in a plane crash in April 2010, on his way to Smolensk in Russia for a commemoration ceremony for over 20,000 Polish officers murdered by the Soviet secret police seventy years earlier. His surviving twin, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, has served as PiS leader since 2003, and remains the power behind the throne, occupied by Prime Minister Mateusz Mazowiecki since 2017.
The PiS came to power with the intent of creating a new “Fourth Polish Republic”, to replace the Third Polish Republic that was declared on 29 December 1989. Its anti-corruption programme, coupled with a commitment to wealth redistribution, soon secured it a fan base among the poorer regions of Poland. Its “Polish Deal”, a socialist economic programme of lower taxes for lower- and middle-income earners, increased benefits for pensioners and children with families, and higher spending on healthcare, remained the centrepiece of its 2023 re-election campaign.
Other aspects of PiS policy include its growing Euroscepticism and pursuit of national sovereignty, an increasingly hostile relationship with Germany, persistent and staunchly held anti-migrant sentiments, and an adherence to conservative Catholicism, which has reflected itself in strict anti-abortion and anti-gay policies.
Poland has fallen out with the EU over the independence of its judiciary, the freedom of its media, its refusal to accept migrants, and its reluctance to respect minority rights, especially those relevant to members of the LGBT community. The Constitutional Tribunal and Supreme Court have been filled with compliant and partisan judges, guaranteed not to stand in the way of government reforms. A rule-of-law crisis has arisen because of Poland’s rejection of certain EU laws, treaties, and court rulings as being unconstitutional. At the same time, the state public broadcaster, TVP (Televizja Polska), has become a government mouthpiece, sticking up for its various anti-EU positions.
The European Commission has responded to what it considers Polish anti-democratic actions by invoking Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union to suspend Poland’s voting rights as an EU member, withholding 36 billion euros in loans and grants from the EU’s pandemic recovery fund, and suing Poland at the European Court of Justice for EU law violations.
Poland can be considered ethnically homogeneous, with almost 97 per cent of the population identifying as Polish (white). This has arisen from the combined effects of Nazi genocide of Polish Jews during the Second World War, the post-war forced migration of ethnic Germans, and strict immigration policies aimed at preserving racial purity ever since. During the 2015 European refugee crisis, Poland, along with the other Visegrad countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia), refused to participate in the EU’s migrant quota system. In September 2021, the Polish government declared a state of emergency in two provinces along the border with Belarus, to block migrants attempting to cross over into Poland and thus enter the EU. But then came the war in Ukraine, when Poland overnight became the most generous host for Ukrainian refugees, as it took in around 1.5 million of ethnically acceptable people fleeing its neighbour.
Despite Germany being Poland’s main trading partner, relations between the two nations have poisoned by the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, which passes under the Baltic Sea, bypassing Poland. On 1 September 2022, the anniversary of Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939, the PiS presented a demand for $1.3 trillion in reparations for war damages from Germany, based on a report that had been completed in May 2019. Most recently, some tensions have been noted in relations with Ukraine, with a ban on cheaper Ukrainian grain imports to protect Polish agriculture, and the withholding of further arms supplies brought about by the depletion of Poland’s own military arsenal.
In January 2021, a near-total abortion ban came into effect in Poland. Legal abortion was restricted to cases of rape, incest, or danger to the mother’s life or health, up to the 12th week of pregnancy, while terminations for congenital defects in the foetus were deemed unconstitutional. The powerful influence of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland, which even produced a Pope, has ensured widespread support for the country’s strict anti-abortion policies.
If the coalition government does go ahead, a change in direction in Poland’s policies seems likely. The Europhile and Germanophile Donald Tusk, “Herr Tusk” to his political opponents, is expected to build bridges with the EU and improve relations with Germany, although demands for reparations may well continue. Freedom of the media and the judiciary are likely to be restored. But the proposed coalition partners do not share common ground on some other issues and much depends on effective negotiations and deal-making once a government is set up. The pattern of voting in the October 2023 elections does suggest, however, that Poland may be heading back to centrist politics and better relations with the European Commission. At least for the time, Poland’s movement towards the right may have been halted.
Ashis Banerjee