Just two weeks before the general elections in Poland, hundreds of thousands of people gathered yesterday in Warsaw in a large demonstration called by the main opposition leader, Donald Tusk, who aims to oust the ultranationalist Law and Justice party from the government ( PiS), in power since 2015.
According to the Warsaw City Council, whose mayor, Rafal Trzaskowski, is a member of Tusk’s party, almost a million people demonstrated, while public television, TVP – which according to media analysts is controlled by the government party – maintained that they were one hundred thousand, citing police sources. The relevant Onet news portal estimates that there were between 600,000 and 800,000 protesters.
The centrist Tusk, who was prime minister (2007-2014) and then president of the European Council (2014-2019), told the protesters that “a decisive moment in the history of our nation is approaching,” calling for mobilization in votes against the rocky government party, favorite in the polls but which could perhaps lose its absolute majority.
Despite continued tensions and conflicts with the EU and accusations of erosion of the rule of law, the ultra-conservative populist Law and Justice party chaired by Jaroslaw Kaczynski maintains a comfortable lead in the polls, with 37.4% voting intention, according to the latest available, carried out by the Polish demographic institute Estimator.
Donald Tusk, who returned to national politics in 2019 after his years in Brussels, is the candidate of the Civic Coalition (KO), which includes his centrist party, Civic Platform (PO), and three small pro-European parties. That same poll gives the Civic Coalition second place in preferences, with 30.6%.
However, according to Tusk, polls commissioned by his party indicate that PiS’s lead has been reduced to just two percentage points. Hence the effort to galvanize his followers for the appointment with the polls on October 15. “Nothing will stop this force anymore. Let no one in the ranks of power have any illusions. “This change is inevitable, for the better,” Tusk said yesterday as he opened the march in Warsaw.
Donald Tusk, 66, faces many obstacles in the campaign, not only due to divisions within the opposition’s own ranks, but above all because of the powerful government apparatus, which paints him as a politician disloyal to the nation. “The electoral campaign is very marked by the long personal rivalry between Tusk and Kaczynski, who as leader of PiS de facto commands everything, above the prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki; All important and strategic decisions go through Kaczynski,” explains political scientist Bastian Sendhart in Berlin.
Government figures such as Kaczynski – who at 74 years of age resumed the position of deputy prime minister in June, from which he had resigned just a year before – and also the public media, have been calling Tusk for some time both as pro-Russian and as a puppet of Germany. Jaroslaw Kaczynski accused him in April 2022 of “covering up” the 2010 Smolensk air disaster – in which the then president, Lech Kaczynski, Jaroslaw’s brother, and 95 other political figures died – to facilitate a “macabre reconciliation with Russia.” .
In the current campaign, an advertisement shows an alleged phone call from the German embassy to Jaroslaw Kaczynski to influence the retirement age in Poland, in which the German voice says that “this is what was done with Prime Minister Tusk”, that Kaczynski replies that this will be decided by the Polish people in a referendum and that “Tusk is no longer here and those customs are over.” To counter such attacks, Tusk often surrounds himself with Polish flags and his emblem is a white and red heart, the national colors.
In the recent Estimator poll, three coalitions follow the government party PiS and Tusk’s KO coalition in the voting preferences: Third Way and the Freedom and Independence Confederation (a magma of far-right and liberals), both with 9.6% each. a; and the leftist Lewica, with 8.7%. “The most plausible thing for Tusk if he could try to form a government coalition would be to ally himself with Third Way and the leftists, but until now there have been transfers of votes between the three potential allies, so it is difficult to gauge his options,” he continues. political scientist Bastian Sendhart.
Not all opposition parties attended yesterday’s march, as the majority had done in the demonstration called by Tusk on June 4.
