Poland’s rival parties campaign in the same way

Poland is in the midst of the election campaign: the main challenger to the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) will be the Civic Coalition (KO) led by Donald Tusk. The election will be held in the autumn, and the battle for votes is intense, but it is difficult to predict who will triumph.

This autumn, the Law and Justice party (PiS), which has governed Poland since 2015, will face off against the center-right Civic Coalition (KO) led by former Prime Minister and former Council of Europe President Donald Tusk. The future ruling party will undoubtedly be one of the two – according to a recent Politico poll, PiS has 35% support compared to 29% for Tusk's party, but this six-percent gap could easily narrow (or broaden) in the coming months. The PiS, in its eighth year in power, has a national-conservative ideology with rhetoric critical of the EU’s leadership: For instance, once the party’s leader Jarosław Kaczyński accused the European Commission (EC) of trying to create political chaos in Poland. But a few weeks ago, he said that Poland wants to remain in the EU but as a sovereign state, which he said was not an anti-EU message, but on the contrary, a return to the roots of the Union. Still, PiS politicians often talk about the EU’s leadership crisis, and the Polish government had many conflicts with the Commission, such as in the Polish judiciary reforms case, which, according to the EC, violated the principle of judicial independence.

The Civic Coalition has a more liberal stance: the party led by Donald Tusk favors the federalization of the EU and is pro-NATO. Statistically, this is more in line with the preferences of the Polish people, as around 85% of them are pro-EU, which is a very high figure in the region. However, EU support tends to be higher in Central European countries than in Western Europe, so it is difficult to make political capital out of this attitude.

Polish society is becoming increasingly polarized, and the KO’s support has jumped recently, so the ruling party can by far not take its third victory as a certainty. For example, the PiS’s decision to set up a commission to investigate Russian influence was surrounded by controversy: the new commission is intended to examine the potential Russian involvement in decisions and policies between 2007 and 2022 and to sanction the responsible officials. The commission’s members would be elected by the lower house of parliament, the Sejm, so it would most likely be made up of PiS-supported people. The decision caused quite a stir, as many people believed it would primarily target KO Chairman Donald Tusk (the law is colloquially known as Lex Tusk) to hinder his campaign and potential victory. The step (which we wrote about here earlier) had such a huge impact that around half a million people demonstrated against the Polish ruling party in Warsaw in early June. The demonstration was motivated by long-standing causes but was crowned by the plan of a commission to investigate Russian influence. The protest was called by Tusk.

Despite the commission of inquiry, the campaign is not stopping. And there is a strange twist in the current race: the two rival sides seem to be pushing the same narrative on one particular issue – the refugee question – with a slight difference: From the conservative PiS anti-immigration rhetoric is not surprising, it was a key element of their campaign before they came to power in 2015. But it seems the rival party’s leader, Tusk, also started to play with anti-refugee slogans and try to turn them against his political opponents with a twist. His campaign is based on the EU Council’s decision of 8 June on the refugee quota, which establishes that a Member State will either take in a certain number of refugees or pay a so-called solidarity contribution of €20,000 per refugee. The approved package includes several other points, but the most significant for the Polish campaign is the mandatory acceptance or payment. The Polish government has declared that the solidarity contribution is actually a financial penalty for refusing to accept refugees and started to rally Polish society against the quota. And now, it looks very likely that the government will initiate to hold a referendum on the same day as the parliamentary election. „We will not agree. Nor do the people of Poland.” – PiS Leader Jarosław Kaczyński said after the decision. In contrast, Donald Tusk is campaigning with the same message but in a slightly different way: the former European Council President explains in videos posted on social media that Muslim immigrants are a real threat but that PiS cannot offer a remedy for this problem, and their approach is wrong. Tusk accused the ruling party of using the EU refugee quota as a distraction. He stated that the EU’s decision would not bring refugees into the country, but at the same time, PiS would open the way for refugees from Africa and the Middle East. Nonetheless, the basis of his claim is unclear as political slogans are in place, but evidence or foundation is lacking.

Tusk’s videos have been condemned as racist and xenophobic by NGOs and left-wing parties. But the PiS is attempting a character assassination of Tusk with a different theme: they are trying to label the former prime minister as pro-Russian, which is unfortunate in a strongly anti-Russian society fully committed to supporting Ukraine. The ruling party uses public television for its campaign: a series is regularly shown accusing Tusk of being pro-Russian and claiming that he has pursued pro-Russian policies during his premiership. Poland has indeed enjoyed good relations with Russia under Tusk, but finding the truth in the turbulent campaign is difficult. What we can do is keep an eye on the developments of the Polish election campaign.

Graphics by Réka Pisla

• strategy
• poland
• pis
• Law and Justice
• donald tusk
• Civic Coalition
• jaroslaw kaczynski
• election
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