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Elections usher in a new dawn in Poland

Bucking Europe’s shift towards the right, Polish voters decided to move back towards the centre, jettisoning the hardline extreme right policies adopted by the Kaczynski twins, who as President and Prime Minister led the country for a disastrous two years. President Lech and Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski were finally split apart at the head of the country’s executive, and Europe heaved a collective sigh of relief.

Parliamentary elections held on October 21 brought about the downfall of the twins’ deeply conservative Law and Justice Party (PiS) and the ouster of the government led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski. In the strongest showing by any single party since Poland threw off the communist yoke in 1989, the country’s business-friendly and pro-European Union Civic Platform (PO) led by the trim, boyish Donald Tusk, emerged victorious with 42 per cent of the votes and 209 of the 460 seats in the Sejm or lower house. The Platform, planning fast reforms to central Europe’s biggest economy, was short of winning enough seats in Parliament to be able to form a government alone and immediately started talks with the pro-EU Peasants Party.

The election, called two years early because of the Kaczynskis’ failure to get on with their ultra-conservative coalition partners, was a calculated gamble that failed to pay off. Millions of Poles, mainly young, irritated by the twins’ abrasive, brutal style and the appalling image they projected of Poland abroad, turned out to vote, creating a scarcity of ballot papers and forcing polling stations to remain open longer than scheduled.

The Kaczynskis’ former coalition partners, the populist Self-Defence (Samoobrona) party and the far-right League of Polish Families (LPR) were booted out of Parliament, polling a humiliating 1.54 per cent and 1.3 per cent of the vote.

Opening the way for Mr. Tusk to take over, Prime Minister Kaczynski announced that he would resign on November 5 when the new Parliament sits. The President will then be able to formally nominate the new Prime Minister but a ruling party official said that would not happen until Mr. Tusk finalises his Cabinet.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski may have been swept from office, but his identical opposite number remains President until 2010 with substantial powers to curtail or vitiate the new government’s action, something he has already promised to do.

The new government will have to muster a double coalition in Parliament in order to fend off President Lech Kaczynski’s veto powers. To gather the required 60 per cent of parliamentary votes in order to override a presidential veto, the new government will have to rely on votes from the ex-Communist Left and Social Democrats in addition to support from Waldemar Pawlak’s Peasants Party, its main coalition partner.

Poland under the Kaczynskis has been seen by many as reactionary, backward looking, rude and obstructionist. In this deeply Catholic country, the brothers followed a programme that was anti-abortion, anti-homosexual and openly pro-capital punishment. Time and again, the brothers needled both Germany and Russia leading to a spectacular downturn in relations with both these major neighbours. In June, Jaroslaw Kacyzinski, the more hardliner of the two, invoked the carnage wrought by the Nazis to score points in a row over EU voting rights, saying that without the war Poland would today have a population of 66 million instead of the present 38 million. Poland also vetoed the start of negotiations on a key new EU-Russian partnership agreement in retaliation against a Russian ban on the import of Polish meat.

All that is now likely to change. Almost immediately after the results were announced, Mr. Tusk sent a clear signal declaring a break with the anti-European policies adopted by the Kaczynski brothers. The future liberal Polish government will adhere to Europe’s Fundamental Rights Charter, he said, rejected by Poland just two days earlier, on October 19, at the EU’s Lisbon summit on the simplified European treaty. A change of government in Warsaw could bring smoother relations with the EU, which Poland joined in 2004 after a lengthy accession process. Its dealings with the EU have been marked at times by distrust and disagreements over what many Poles see as attempts to force liberal “European values” on the predominantly Roman Catholic country. Poland is one of only three EU countries to restrict abortion; it has clashed with European institutions over homosexual rights; and its objections threw into disarray EU plans to hold a day against the death penalty earlier this month.

Poland has also differed with the EU over institutional issues, accusing the bloc of treating the former communist newcomers as second-class members. Polish objections have been among those complicating lengthy efforts by the EU to endorse a new reform treaty and end an institutional crisis triggered by referendums in 2005 rejecting a new EU constitution.

“Ours will be a government of modernity and active participation in the European Union,” PO’s Euro-MP Jacek Saryusz-Wolski declared. During the electoral campaign, Mr. Tusk also promised to join the Eurozone by 2013 and bring home Polish troops from Iraq. The new government is expected to significantly improve ties with Moscow and Berlin unless President Kaczynski decides otherwise — a distinct possibility, since under the Constitution, foreign relations fall under his direct purview.

The very market-friendly PO is determined to reverse the influx of young Poles into Britain and Ireland by creating new job opportunities at home. It supports fiscal reform, including the possible introduction of a flat tax system. It wants to restart privatisation in the power, airline and banking industries — although it will continue to regard gas distribution and oil as strategic. And it is also positive about euro membership, probably after 2012.

Another key issue facing the next government is the presence of 10 interceptor missiles on Polish soil as part of the Pentagon’s proposed ballistic missile defense (BMD) umbrella. The plan to place the silo-based missiles in Poland, and an associated radar facility in the Czech Republic, is a major source of contention in both countries. Both governments support the proposal but public opinion is split. Among other things, many worry about the possible consequences of Russia’s strong objections. Civic Platform has not ruled out cooperating on BMD, although one of its most prominent members, Radek Sikorski, has been pressing for more generous aid package for Poland in return, including upgraded Patriot missiles to protect Warsaw against medium-range missile attack.

So why did the Kaczyinskis suffer such a resounding defeat? One of the explanations is that the Poles have established a tradition of political alternation ever since they held their first free elections in 1993. But this does not fully explain the crushing defeat suffered by their two ultra-conservative coalition partners, the Self Defence Party and the League of Families, which failed to get the minimum 5 per cent vote needed to enter Parliament.

The fact of the matter is that Poland’s reality is streets away from the obscurantist caricature presented by the outgoing government. Polish society and its economy have, in recent years, displayed both flexibility and dynamism, allowing the emergence of a new middle class whose values are more akin to the liberal ideas preached by the PO than the moralising strictures passed by Radio Maryja, the hate-diffusing extreme-right radio station that gave unstinting support to the Kaczyinksis.

The openly anti-European line adopted by President Lech Kaczyinksi but even more by his brother Jaroslaw did not go down well with the Poles, most of whom are aware of the many advantages their entry into the European Union has conferred upon them. The politics of blockage and boycotts followed by the brothers met with deep disapproval at home. This does not mean Poland will abandon its national interests. It does mean, however, that Warsaw will no longer systematically oppose all progress towards European integration.

With this combination of alternation, moderation and a rejection of populist politics, Poland is setting a fine example of a mature political democracy which is finally emerging from a period of transition. Former stalwarts of the Solidarity movement who had found themselves pushed to the margins as populism took over now find themselves back in the mainstream fold.

“We finally have the opportunity to become a normal European nation. It’s the end of a black period for the country. That has ended now. And that has ended before terrible damage was done,” said Zbigniew Lewicki, who teaches political science at the University of Warsaw.

A comment in the Financial Times summed it up nicely: “Poland is now politically more coherent. Gone are the teetering coalitions that threatened to collapse at the first whiff of scandal. Gone too from parliament are unsavoury extremist parties like the populist Self-Defence or rightwing League of Polish Families. … In its place is a parliament dominated by three factions: the liberal conservatism of Civic Platform, the nationalism of Mr. Kaczynski’s Law and Justice party, and the centre-left social democrats. If it looks like any other country, it is a measure of how far Poland has travelled.”

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