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Parliamentary elections will be held in Poland on Sunday, October 15. For months, polls have predicted the victory of the far right coalition made of Confederation and Law and Justice (PiS) party. But recent polls indicate a change of trends, and the opposition parties, including the Civic Coalition (KO) led by Donald Tusk, believe they will prevent Jarosław Kaczyński from winning for the third time in a row. On the other hand, the conservatives – who are accused of an increasingly authoritarian behavior – are reviving their anti-migrant and anti-EU rhetoric, and harshening their tone towards Ukraine. One thing is certain – this is the harshest and most brutal election campaign in the post-communist Republic of Poland. The
A “million hearts” march of the opposition as the government gets the worst ratings in decades. Could that upset the conservatives’ many advantages?
On Sunday, October the 1st, the Million Hearts March, organized by the Civic Coalition (KO), took place in Warsaw. It was one of the largest gatherings in Poland after 1989. Between 600,000 and one million people took to the streets of the capital. It was not about supporting the KO – participants had different views and political sympathies – but about expressing opposition to the ruling party and the government's policy. After the march, opposition politicians became more optimistic and energetic – they say more boldly that victory is within their reach.
Most of the politicians of the ruling bloc left Warsaw that day. The PiS held its convention in Katowice on October the 1st, but commentators agree that party activists lacked energy and even seemed scared.
The message of the Million Hearts March was clear: we will win, together with the other opposition parties we will form a government, and in just two weeks we will wake up in a different Poland. On the other hand, the PiS convention was almost entirely devoted to the threat that Jarosław Kaczyński sees in Donald Tusk. Will this fear projected onto voters turn out to be a mobilizing factor? This is probably the opinion of the leader of PiS. The party’s latest election ad reminds people that Donald Tusk’s government raised the retirement age from 65 to 67 for men back in 2012. “We are giving Poles a free choice instead of Tusk's dictate. Stop 67! Stop Tusk! In one simple way, you can stop him on October 15 by voting for PiS," we hear in the spot. PiS politicians have only one thing to say about the march itself: "There was a march, and it has passed, [what’s important now is] the next days."
The ruling party started the electoral campaign with a huge advantage over the opposition. It can count on a politicized public media made up of over 20 radio and television stations, on state-owned companies that are ready to provide funds, on a number of institutions it may use to achieve its goals, including the Polish Post (postmen throw leaflets into mailboxes encouraging people to vote for PiS or threatening with immigrants from Muslim countries), and it has almost unlimited funds for conducting the election campaign.
In spite of all that, the situation is not at all rosy for the ruling party. A report published on October 3 by the Public Opinion Research Center (CBOS) shows that, compared to 2019, negative assessments of Mateusz Morawiecki's government in various categories increased by an average of 20 percentage points. In many of them, the number of unsatisfactory grades given by Poles to the government is the highest in decades. CBOS conducted its research between September 4 and 14. There are five areas in which government activities are rated worst: economy, agricultural policy, combating corruption, managing public funds, and running the country.
Other polls showed that support for PiS is falling, while support for the opposition is growing. Commentators, however, cool down the enthusiasm of Donald Tusk and the rest of the opposition leaders, saying that PiS may no longer be as popular as it was over the last 8 years, but - due to the changes introduced by PiS to the vote recounting system, which heavily rewards the winner - it can still govern on its own. The situation is complicated and there are many indications that the election result will ultimately be decided by the undecided conservative electorate. This means that in the final stretch, all parties, wanting to get additional votes, begin to "tempt" people from outside the core electorate (ideologically consistent with the program and slogans proclaimed so far). There are times when this means a 180-degree turn and can cause a lot of confusion, not only in domestic politics.
A harsher tone towards Ukraine, Polexit talks and anti-migrant rhetoric
The Polish – Ukrainian relations were recently marked by tensions that officially were connected to the transit of Ukrainian grains through Poland. Warsaw opposed the entry of Ukrainian grains, despite the fact that they were being bound by the European directive allowing grain transit to Africa and the Middle East. The Polish government claimed it was protecting its own farmers, despite the fact that a maximum of 2% of Ukrainian production was sent Poland. Things quickly escalated, as Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Poland favors Moscow and the head of the Polish government suggested abandoning military assistance to Ukraine, just as that country is fighting for its survival. President Andrzej Duda commented that "We are dealing with a drowning person. Anyone who has ever been involved in rescuing someone like that knows that a drowning person is incredibly dangerous; for it may drag you into the depths.”
In fact, by adopting a harsh tone regarding Ukrainian goods, the government wants to please Polish farmers, but it is also counting on the votes of groups that are unfriendly to Ukrainians or openly anti-Ukrainian voters.
It’s not only about grains or elections. Poland’s harshness towards Ukraine also has to do with Warsaw’s tensions with the EU and its anti-German stance. Kiev's clear friendly gestures towards Berlin (e.g. support for Germany's aspiration for permanent membership in the UN Security Council) have irritated the ruling camp in Warsaw and deepened the feeling that Ukraine is ungrateful, given Polish initial, unconditional support, in contrast to Germany's slowness in providing military aid to Ukraine. But today, Kiev's priority and strategic goal is for Ukraine to obtain membership in the European Union, for which Germany, which holds a key position in the EU structures, seems to be much more useful than Poland, which is at odds with Brussels.
The ruling PiS is not only sabotaging the good relations between Warsaw and Kiev; it is also increasingly returning to the idea of Polexit. 11 days before the elections, the leading right-wing weekly magazine "Do Rzeczy", which remains under government control (the newspaper is financed by state-owned companies), headlined on its cover: "Yes! We should leave the European Union!” The author of the article, Tomasz Cukiernik, argues that Poland loses more than it gains from EU membership. And in the coming years, this balance will "deteriorate even more rapidly".
The Polish government certainly does not like the fact that The European Union has asked Poland to clear up the accusation of widespread visa fraud involving top officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including Deputy Foreign Minister Piotr Wawrzyk.
Polish media had reported that migrants paid up to $5,000 to Polish consulates and private companies to speed up visa applications.
Germany has also asked Poland to provide details about the number of visas given out and the nationalities of the people who received them.
The Polish government has admitted that hundreds of visas were issued illegally but it has rejected the significantly larger number of hundreds of thousands of visas for people from Asia and Africa that was advanced by the oppositio.
The opposition has called it "the biggest scandal we have faced in the 21st Century" and "corruption at the highest levels of government”. That’s a big potential problem for the ruling nationalist party ahead of the October 15. The PiS party has always pushed an anti-immigrant message — especially for people from Muslim countries — and has touted the construction of a fence along the border with Belarus to prevent illegal migration as one of its signature achievements.
The ministry said it would terminate all contracts for outsourcing companies that had handled visa applications since 2011. Seven people were charged in relation to the allegations, three of whom remain in detention.
At the same time, the Polish authorities closed some border crossings with Slovakia and resumed passport controls at the remaining ones in an effort to prevent more migrants from entering the country. Germany has taken similar steps - it has increased police patrols along “smuggling routes” on its border with Poland and the Czech Republic.
In spite of PiS anti-Russian rhetoric, Moscow would like the party to stay in power
It is no secret that Moscow is counting on Jarosław Kaczyński's party to win again. PiS, although in its declarations it is an anti-Putin party, has made many decisions and moves that – as the saying goes – lead to champaign bottled being uncorked in the Kremlin. This could have been the case when the Parliament established the State Commission to investigate Russian influence on the internal security of the Republic of Poland in the years 2007–2022. It was intended that the Commission would have the powers of the court and the prosecutor's office with the power to bar people from the public office for 10 years for links to Russia. Looking at the composition of the Commission and its powers, it is hard not to get the impression that the point is not to combat Russian influence but rather to make the Polish system of governance similar to that known from Putin's Russia. Both the US and EU said the nine-member committee, which was set to be dominated by MPs from the governing PiS Party, could be used to target the opposition ahead of this autumn's elections. Poland's opposition dubbed the law "Lex Tusk" and said it was designed specifically to discredit the leader of the main opposition party and former prime minister Donald Tusk. Stung by US criticism of the law, President Andrzej Duda tabled amendments removing the committee's power to ban anyone accused of acting against Polish interests from public office.
In a remarkably swift U-turn, the same governing party MPs who enthusiastically approved the legislation just a few weeks ago voted to neuter the committee's powers.
So far, all pre-election polls have indicated that Jarosław Kaczyński's party will win an absolute majority and will be able to easily rule alone or in coalition with the ultra-right, anti-EU Confederation Party (Konfederacja). The latter claims that "there is too much state in the country", promises a sharp tax reduction, and most often talks about Ukraine and Ukrainians in the context of the Volhynian massacres committed on Poles in 1943-45. Recently, the Confederation candidate Samuela Torkowska from Krakow, when asked directly about her party's attitude to the war started by Russia, replied that it was a "politically incorrect" topic. She then admitted that there was no unanimity within the party itself: "Opinions are divided on who should win the war." Encouraged to expand on her thoughts, she said: “Do you think Ukraine has any chance against Russia? After all, Russia did not use even 15 percent. of its strength.” And she argued: “The sooner the war ends, the better. And every rifle sent to Ukraine pushes these people to war.”
So perhaps the latest change in the narrative of the PiS government regarding Ukraine means that Kaczyński is now preparing to include Confederation Party in the coalition after the elections (polls gave Confederation about 10% of the votes) to maximize its power.
The latest polls though – conducted in early October – are not so optimistic for the government. According to a Kantar survey for TVN, PiS is losing support and the opposition has a chance for an absolute majority in the Parliament. According to the poll, 34% would vote for PiS. Second would be the Civic Coalition (30%), consisting of four parties: Civic Platform (PO), Nowoczesna, Polish Initiative and the Greens. The difference between PiS and KO is rapidly decreasing. The New Left (Nowa Lewica) ranks third with 10 percent (an increase of as much as 4 percentage points compared to the September survey). Next comes the Third Way (Trzecia Droga) - the coalition of Poland 2050 Party and the Polish People's Party with a result of 9 percent. In turn, the Confederation Party has 8 percent support.
What does it mean? That the polls don't tell us much, and we will have to wait until mid-October for the general election results. One thing is certain: in a country where all significant state institutions are subordinated to one party, Jarosław Kaczyński certainly has a plan in case Tusk takes the power. Many commentators are already suggesting that there will be economic Armageddon (increase in interest rates, energy costs etc.), and from there it will be close to early elections. Does this mean that Poland is doomed to be ruled by PiS, even if it votes for a change of government?
