This Sunday, Jaroslaw Kaczynski and Donald Tusk have a perhaps definitive political battle in Poland, within the framework of a rivalry that has lasted for years, but in which one now has the apparatus of power and the public media, increasingly controlled by the ruling party, to denigrate the other. For his formation, Law and Justice (PiS), Kaczynski is seeking a third consecutive term with which to consolidate an ultra-conservative nationalist government, and Tusk leads a centrist coalition that aspires to oust him to return the country to the European path and repair the erosion of balances in public institutions.

This is the dilemma that Poles face today in highly polarized legislative elections, combined with a referendum designed by the Government with two questions on migration that contribute to stirring up the atmosphere. Some 29 million voters are called to the polls (half a million of them abroad) in this country of 40 million inhabitants, and voting takes place from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Allied countries watch the process with expectation.

Law and Justice, Kaczynski’s populist right-wing party, leads the polls with between 33 and 36%, followed by Civic Coalition (KO), the centrist alliance led by Tusk’s party, the liberal Citizens Platform (PO), with between 26 and 28%. Three smaller parties are competing for third place. Confederation, an amalgam of far-right and ultra-libertarians, a potential ally of PiS if it maintains hegemony but loses the absolute majority – as the polls predict –, scores at 10%.

Donald Tusk’s two possible partners have a similar percentage of support: Third Way – a coalition of the centrist Poland 2050 party and the Polish People’s Party (PSL), heir to the old peasant party – and the leftist Lewica. But, despite the distance in polls between PiS and KO, Tusk has hinted that his polls predict a close result, so what the other parties obtain may end up being key.

In the campaign, Tusk’s name has been mentioned ad nauseam by PiS leaders and never for the better; They have called him a “traitor to the nation”, “coward”, “Putin’s ally” and “incarnation of evil”, calling for him to be defeated.

“The campaign has been emotional on both sides, vague and in reality with few arguments: antiTusk on the side of the Government and antiPiS on the side of the opposition,” sighs Renata Mienkowska-Norkiene, a political scientist at the University of Warsaw. And it has been very personalized in the two men who have known and competed for almost two decades.” Although it may seem that Donald Tusk is challenging Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki for the position, his de facto opponent is Jaroslaw Kaczynski, deputy prime minister and leader of the PiS, also perceived as a true factotum of the party’s and the Government’s strategy.

Kaczynski co-founded Law and Justice in 2001 with his late twin brother Lech, a party that has alternated in power with the Civic Coalition for the last 18 years. With him as prime minister, PiS led a fragile coalition (2005-2007); and then the KO governed with the Polish People’s Party (PSL) as a junior partner (2007-2015), a time when Tusk was prime minister, although he left office in 2014 to go to Brussels as president of the European Council. In 2015, PiS returned to govern with small allies. For temporary reasons, Kaczynski used other names for the position of prime minister: Beata Szydlo until 2017 and then Morawiecki. In 2019 Donald Tusk returned to national politics. Meanwhile, PiS is still here and wants to continue.

If Kaczynski embodies social, nationalist and Catholic ultra-conservatism, Tusk represents centrist and European liberalism. And this ‘external’ profile of Tusk is systematically used by the Government to accuse him of wanting to subjugate Polish sovereignty to Brussels, and above all to Berlin. Tusk is criticized for his good relations as prime minister with the then German chancellor, Angela Merkel, suggesting that he governed by dictation.

“Anti-German rhetoric is part of the political folklore of PiS, despite the fact that polls show that Poles generally have a positive image of Germany, and there is also a clear pro-EU majority,” notes political scientist Agnieszka Lada-Konefal. Within PiS there are some anti-German people, but not that many.” Why then attack Germany like this? “Because PiS is fighting for every vote; the absolute majority is at stake.”