A change of direction is underway in Poland. The right-wing conservative PiS party remains the largest faction, but has no prospect of a government majority. The liberal camp around former Prime Minister Donald Tusk is celebrating. But Tusk has a lot of work ahead of him.
The Poles have voted. According to the first projections and the exit polls, Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s Law and Justice Party (PiS) is once again the strongest force with around 36.6 percent of the vote. But the right-wing populists are alone; no other party wants to form a coalition with them. This means that the democratic opposition from former Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s liberal citizens’ coalition, the center-right Third Way alliance and the Left have the best chance of forming a coalition and taking power. With around 248 MPs, 17 seats more than the calculated parliamentary majority of 231 seats. Tusk’s Civic Platform won 31 percent of the vote, making it the largest bloc within the liberal camp. So Donald Tusk’s chances of becoming the new Prime Minister are good. Official results are not expected until Tuesday morning.
“We did it,” declared Donald Tusk on election night when the results of the exit polls were published. “Democracy has won, Poland has won.” Then he added, visibly moved: “Today is the day that ushers in a new era: the rebirth of our republic.”
For a long time it did not look as if the PiS could be forced from power. She ran an unfair election campaign, misused the public media for her own propaganda, and diverted state funds for her own campaign. A majority of 19 million Polish voters voted for change after eight years under a PiS government in which democracy and civil liberties were restricted in favor of ill-defined national sovereignty. Probably also because the PiS’s policies had increasingly isolated Poland in Europe and sidelined it.