In about three years, the ruling national-conservative Justice and Justice Party (PiS) has repeatedly put the Polish Constitution to the test. The Polish left, fragmented and competing with each other, is currently only a few in parliament. Before the upcoming elections – EU and Polish Parliament – the left-wing opposition tries to counteract the shift to the right in Poland and Europe.
Time is short for the opposition. The parliament, Sejm and Senate, is to be re-elected in the autumn, already in May, the EU election can be the first mood test for the PiS government and its new challengers. 2020 should follow the presidential election. The opposition is now trying to roll the field from local politics. The opposition has already had its first successes in the local elections last November. Especially in the cities, the PiS suffered a clear defeat, but the governing party was able to strengthen its position at the regional level.
But the newly elected mayors of the opposition are also gaining support across larger regions. The Mayor of Gdansk, Pawel Adamowicz, who was murdered in January, also played a key role. The Polish Left is increasingly trying to overcome political divisions through grassroots networking, local politics and local concerns – as a new model for forming political alliances. Support for it in the population increased with the murder of Adamowicz.
„To fulfill Adamowicz’s heritage“
He was attacked on the open stage at a charity event in January and died shortly afterwards of his injuries. The murder is associated by critics with hate speech and hate speech in government-related media. The government found no clear refusal. Rather, PiS boss Jaroslaw Kaczynski and two other MPs left a minute’s silence of parliament in memory of Adamowicz, reported the US magazine „Foreign Affairs“.
Although the PiS is still in the polls at around 37 percent of the vote. However, according to a recent poll by Rzeczpospolita newspaper, the newly-founded Spring Party (Wiosna) has already achieved more than 16 percent of the vote and third place after PiS and the Civic Platform (PO). Observers give her a chance.
Biedron referred to the assassination of Adamowicz at his party’s founding day: „We need more positive energy now than ever before (…). We have to fulfill the legacy of Pawel Adamowicz. „He became the first self-confessed homosexual politician in Poland to become a mayor of Slupsk. In the last local elections, he did not compete, but started a multi-week tour of Polish cities. The goal of his „brainstorming sessions“ with thousands of participants was the founding of a new party as an alternative to the governing party PiS.
Spring could break PiS Absolute
Biedron could score points with voters who can not identify with either the PiS or the liberal-conservative Civic Platform (PO), analyzed Jacek Kucharzyk from the Warsaw think tank Institute for Public Affairs.
Whether the high poll value, which the party almost immediately managed, can be held until the elections, is questionable. But Biedrons spring could bring the PiS to an absolute majority, said the political scientist Anna Materska-Sosnowska. Should more people go to vote, this can be quite close for the PiS. At the last round of parliamentary elections in autumn 2015, the turnout was 51 percent.
Points with social policy
Biedron, with his left-liberal party, apparently wants to focus on socio-political issues with which the PiS has so far been successful – for example by reducing the retirement age and child benefit from the second child. Biedron wants to introduce this already for the first child, in addition, minimum wage and minimum pension should be raised. For the rights of women and sexual minorities, too, Biedron takes a clear position, in contrast to the PO. The strict abortion law is supposed to become more liberal when it comes to Biedron and the church will be taxed.
Especially when dealing with the church, the atheist Biedron differs from the confessed Catholics Adamowicz. While the murdered mayor of Gdańsk addressed so moderate voters – after all, about 90 percent of Poles are Catholic baptized – and showed that social tolerance and the Polish Catholic belief system are not mutually exclusive, Biedron wants to know church and state separately. What Biedron could benefit from is the growing displeasure over the Church’s increased influence under the PiS government, said expert Kucharczyk.
Mediator role for PO?
The Polish left was torn between the need for compromise and the desire for radical change, analyzed Foreign Affairs. Although the PO was clearly voted out in the last general election, according to observers, it would probably be best to negotiate a compromise between the various left-wing groups.
In the course of this, there are speculations that the current EU Council President, Donald Tusk, formerly a leading figure in the PO, could enter the race for the Civic Platform 2020 as a presidential candidate. So far, however, Tusk has not commented on it.
