Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party, PiS for short, has created a website called “Tusk means misery”. Donald Tusk with his conservative-liberal party Civic Platform, PO, is the biggest political opponent of the right-wing nationalist PiS and is running against them in the parliamentary elections in autumn. However, one can hardly describe the different camps only as opponents, they treat each other as enemies. In the most recent polls, PiS and the Tusk camp are tied at about 31 percent of the vote. On the other hand, the values for the previous right-wing extremist coalition partner of the PiS, Solidarna Polska, are bad. The opposition, on the other hand, is not as united as many voters would like in the polls.
At the beginning of the week, the leaders of both parties came together. The opposition is often accused of not knowing any other topic than bringing the PiS out of power. But it has always been the PiS that has worked primarily with the defamation of its opponents.
Donald Tusk himself, in particular, is subject to personal, abusive, defamatory attacks. The government side describes him as both a friend of Russia and simply as a “German”, in the eyes of some PiS politicians the worst insult ever. On the other hand, opponents of the government repeatedly resort to comparisons with Russia. To this end, they cite constant, strong attacks on freedom of the press and the politicization of the judiciary, state broadcasters, museums, foundations, educational and research institutions.
Can Tusk unite the opposition?
The website now created by the PiS promises to clarify “manipulations” and to gather “facts” about the years under Tusk-led governments, 2007 to 2015. The state television broadcaster TVP Info, which the PiS has completely converted into its mouthpiece, has now introduced a “Fact Checking” section. Articles and comments from competing media are picked up there and described as “fake news” without offering any proof of this.
It is eagerly awaited what the opposition camp is planning. There is speculation, for example, that Tusk’s Civic Platform will work with the new liberal Polska 2050 party. It was founded by former TV presenter Szymon Hołownia after he came third in the first round of the 2020 presidential election. But Hołownia has now decided to draw up a joint list with the Polish People’s Party, PSL. Both share Christian values, they want to work for firm ties to the EU and NATO, the restoration of the rule of law and ecological issues.
Tusk had actually been promoting a joint opposition list since his return to Polish politics in 2021. Whether he can win a party other than Polska 2050, such as the left, to work with him remains to be seen. After all, members of the municipal movement “Ja! For Poland” have now declared that they want to support Tusk’s PO in the election campaign and that they could fill the list. The movement was founded a good two years ago and wants to prevent the PiS from increasingly concentrating power on the central government in Warsaw – and thus also taking over the distribution of EU funds.
36 billion euros of EU money are blocked
Whether the current government can still get enough money from the EU is one of the main questions facing this election campaign. 36 billion euros from the Corona reconstruction fund are currently blocked. With changes to the law, the government is trying to convince the EU Commission that the judiciary is once again operating on the basis of EU law. Polish lawyers who support independent courts see all these attempts as insufficient. A current draft law was revised by the Senate, in which the opposition has the majority, in the interests of the EU – but the Sejm rejected all changes again. So this topic is pushed back and forth, the camps accuse each other of blocking the payment of the money.
There is no election date yet. According to the election calendar, it must be in November at the latest. The government only changed the electoral law in January. “We are doing everything we can to make this year’s elections as fair and transparent as possible,” Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said in his podcast over the weekend. There should be more and smaller constituencies, more polling stations and free transport for everyone for whom the way to the next polling station is otherwise too difficult. The PiS could use all of this, because it is traditionally strong outside the cities, the opposition in the metropolises.
That is why the PO announced a plan to closely monitor the elections. In her view, changing the electoral law shortly before an election “violates the basic principles of democracy”. Tusk concluded, “If they are able to manipulate the electoral law, other electoral manipulations are easy to imagine.”