Expert on election results in Poland: “New government will have to resort to tricks”

Poland is facing a change of government – how quickly depends on President Duda, says political expert Buras. Which reforms the coalition wants to tackle first and what will become of the voted out PiS.

daily News: As of today, the official final result of the election in Poland is available, which amounts to a change of government, although the previous ruling party, PiS, is the strongest force. Who voted – and for what?

Piotr Buras: I believe that ultimately the voters who were undecided until recently made the difference in the election – the high voter turnout in particular is due to this. And who were these people? I think it was mainly young people and women who made the difference – the majority of them voted for the opposition parties.

From this perspective one can say: the young people and secondly women, whose turnout was also disproportionately high, decided the election.

The consequences of polarization

daily News: What made you decide to cast your vote?

Buras: Firstly, it was the very high emotionality of this election campaign and a very high degree of polarization that led to both sides feeling motivated to go to the polls and support their respective parties.

Secondly – this is perhaps a paradoxical statement – the rejection of this polarization also motivated people to take part in the election. This is good news, because it is clear: a lot of Poles are fed up with this polarization, with the fight and hatred that they constantly see on social media and feel in public life. That could have led to disillusionment with politics, but that didn’t happen.

Of course, both sides, both Donald Tusk and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, have long relied on polarization. But in the final stages of his campaign, Tusk took a completely different tone: he spoke of the need to overcome division, to somehow hold society together or bring it back together. He highlighted the unity of the opposition parties.

And interestingly, almost 15 percent of voters also voted for the “Third Way” – the most important message from this party was: We are not part of this confrontation between Tusk and Kaczynski and we want to do it differently. They are the biggest winners of this election.

And in the final phase, there was an awakening, especially among younger voters, that they realized: Maybe there is actually a lot at stake in this election. Maybe we should actually go and vote.

“There is no legal basis for reforms”

daily News: How difficult will it be to form a government?

Buras: This will probably be completed in the next two months. Now the big question is how the president will behave. It gives the mandate to form a government and has a free hand to nominate anyone. He will probably nominate a representative from PiS – from the party that won the election but lost at the same time because it has no coalition options.

This will delay the government formation process by two to three weeks. If this first step in forming a government fails because a PiS candidate cannot find a majority in parliament, the procedure stipulates that the opposition tries to form the government because it is no longer the president but the parliament that takes the initiative. The president has nothing more to say in this second step. He only comes back into play to then confirm the government that has been formed.

This means that we should actually have a government before Christmas, probably not much sooner because the first session of Parliament may not take place until mid-November. This is also the decision of the president, who as a PiS loyalist will probably make full use of the time he has. It is in the interest of the current governing party that the first meeting takes place as late as possible because it will then be in power for longer and can prepare for the loss of power.

How to implement reforms?

daily News: How stable will the opposition alliance be as a government?

Buras: The alliance is stable in purely numerical terms. I think there is a broad consensus on many issues: the reconstruction of the rule of law, the pro-European course, more investment in the public sector, relief for entrepreneurs… The parties have been preparing for this scenario for a long time and in the past Some joint legislative proposals were introduced during the legislative period.

Of course, there will also be tensions on some points: I can imagine that the question of how to carry out certain reforms can cause disagreements. In Poland, the new government will probably have to resort to various tricks in order to get something done because there will be no legal basis for the necessary reforms – because these were completely destroyed by the previous government. This will cause major complications.

You will have to ask yourself: For example, we want to free public television from the political influence of the PiS. But how do we do that? What is the legal basis? If we act too legalistically, we can’t do anything because the Constitutional Court or the President will get in the way. Here I can imagine that some people want to proceed a little faster and less legalistically; others will say: You cannot restore the rule of law by breaking the rules of the rule of law.

Even on very specific issues such as migration, the Left will have different ideas than Tusk – and since the Left performed quite poorly in the election, it will also have to be very careful that its positions and values ​​are not completely lost.

“The priority will be to disempower the PiS”

daily News: Which projects will the new government coalition tackle first?

Buras: The priority will be to disempower the PiS – i.e. not to implement major reforms at first, but simply to make the necessary institutional changes. The PiS people will have to be removed from positions of power because they have dug themselves in quite deeply and can make governing more difficult: from state-owned companies, ministries, public television.

But the new government will need to implement a few symbolic reforms to secure support and trust in society. And just as the PiS introduced the famous child benefit reform in 2015, the new government will increase investment in education and the public sector and, above all – as a symbolic measure – raise teachers’ salaries. This is sorely needed – and a clear signal about what is important to them.

The public sector is an important constituency of voters for the “Civic Platform”, but also for the other parties – and this constituency needs to know that the government is fulfilling its election promises. This measure can also cause some tension in the government because some, like the “Third Way”, may say: “We don’t actually have this money”, but others in the coalition will then object because they see it as politically necessary.

“PiS will be a very tough opposition”

daily News: What new role will the PiS now find for itself?

Buras: I think this election defeat will plunge them into a crisis. That’s always the case with parties that have been in power for a long time and are then disempowered in this way.

The PiS will be a very tough opposition. She will have to fight against the extreme right “Konfederacija” and court their voters. And I fear that she will display even more Eurosceptic, if not anti-European, rhetoric. This became apparent on election night, when media representatives loyal to PiS said that the opposition’s victory posed a threat to Poland’s independence. It may be that, as in Britain before Brexit or as in France, attitudes towards the EU will greatly polarize the political system.

The interview was conducted by Jasper Steinlein, tagesschau.de