While Law and Justice (PiS), the ultra-conservative party that governs Poland, strives to achieve a third consecutive mandate in Sunday’s elections, and to do so, cultivating a dispute with its main rival, the Civic Coalition (KO) of Donald Tusk, Another party is asking for passage and could become key if PiS, as the polls suggest, does not obtain an absolute majority and needs allies.
Confederación Libertad y Independencia –or simply Confederación–, an alliance of three parties that amalgamates ultra-rightists and ultra-libertarians, is around 10% in voting intention surveys. Founded as a coalition in 2018 to compete in the European elections the following year, it then ran in the Polish elections in that same 2019, and garnered 6.8% of the votes. His creed combines the pure and simple extreme right with the rhetoric of absolute freedoms and the desire for deregulation. “A barbecue, a family, a house, two cars, a safe Poland without immigrants, free enterprise, and a country that allows every working Pole to achieve success,” summarized one of its leaders, Michal Urbaniak, at a recent event. of the party in Gdansk.
Now, in addition, the Confederation exploits as an electoral asset the anti-Ukrainian sentiment that is emerging in sectors of society due to the aid to the million refugees – basically women and children – welcomed in Poland after escaping the Russian war against Ukraine, and due to the cereal dispute. Ukrainian, which irritates farmers because the import distorts the prices of the grain they grow. In August, a survey indicated that supporters of allowing refugees from Ukraine to enter has fallen to 69%, when just after the war began in February 2022 that percentage was 91%.
“The general attitude of Poles towards Ukrainian refugees remains positive and support for Kyiv’s war effort is almost unanimous, but critical opinions are emerging and promoted by the Confederation, which worries PiS and explains some recent behavior of the Government,” says Renata Mienkowska-Norkiene, a political scientist at the University of Warsaw. The Executive reminds again and again that aid to Ukrainians is temporary, has toughened its tone with Zelensky over grain, and announced the end of arms deliveries to Kyiv once the already agreed upon orders are concluded.
In any case, the Confederation expresses the concern of those Poles who feel harmed by people coming from Ukraine. “It is a party designed by and for men, for which men vote mainly, both older and lately young people with professional success, but now a pocket of sympathizers has also emerged among young women,” says political scientist Mienkowska-Norkiene. They see Ukrainian women as competition in the marriage market; It is not a perception, it is statistically true that weddings between Ukrainians and Poles have increased.”
But, apart from the themes it deals with, the success of Confederación is also in the forms and methods. After a tumultuous renewal of leaders at a congress a few months ago – in which the octogenarian Janusz Korwin-Mikke, known for activities such as eating his income tax return in public to protest taxes, was removed – the two faces that now lead the party, Krzysztof Bosak and Slawomir Mentzen, are young professionals skilled in the language of social networks. Thus they have been attracting people from large cities, among them students and young people who will vote for the first time – this is reflected in the polls – when before their vote pool was basically rural.
Slawomir Mentzen, 36, owns a successful law firm, sporting goods stores, a beer brand and a bar with signs prohibiting entry to “traitor politicians.” In the 2019 European elections, Mentzen formulated a five-point plan: “We do not want Jews, homosexuals, abortion, taxes or the European Union.”
Since then, it has distanced itself from those phrases, although the party’s ideology does indeed include the total prohibition of abortion, even in the case of rape; the reduction of taxes, among other things with a market health system; disdain for diversity, immigration and minorities; and Poland’s use of the EU veto to avoid “impositions such as climate political ideology.”
The other leader, Krzysztof Bosak, 41, was a candidate in the 2020 presidential elections, and is known for his outrageous parliamentary interventions. To commemorate a patriotic historical date, he gave two long speeches on the same day and did not leave the platform until midnight, when only one usher was listening to him.
With this young leadership on the extreme right – that is, people with time ahead of them – analysts believe that the Confederation will not want to enter a PiS government and risk being swallowed up, but that it could well give it external support or give it a couple of seats.