In order to replace PiS, several parties and alliances in Poland would have to form a coalition. In terms of content, “Citizens’ Coalition”, “New Left” and “Third Way” are sometimes far apart. How stable could a coalition be?
Donald Tusk and his “Citizens’ Coalition” won, but the real shooting star of the Polish parliamentary elections is Szymon Hołownia. For a long time it was not certain whether his “Third Way” electoral alliance would even make it into parliament. But with 14.4 percent and more than three million votes, the alliance immediately became the third strongest force in the Sejm and exceeded all expectations.
One reason for the surprise success was the appearance of Hołownia, chairman of “Polska 2050”, at a television debate shortly before the election. Because while Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and opposition candidate Tusk argued, Hołownia stood by and shone:
We don’t get what we should have long ago: InVitro treatments that are reimbursed for everyone. Safe schools for our children. A profitable agriculture. And above all, what OUR government guarantees after the elections: national reconciliation. Our enemy is outside the borders, not within the country.
Surprising success as a non-party
47-year-old Hołownia is a good speaker. He is a journalist, has presented on radio and television, and has written numerous books as a Catholic journalist. Hołownia wants to be the alternative between PiS and “Citizens’ Platform”, the third option.
In the 2020 presidential election, he ran as an independent candidate against incumbent Andrzej Duda from the PiS and challenger Rafał Trzaskowski from the “Citizens Coalition”. Actually he had no chance. But Hołownia won 13 percent of the vote straight away and made a name for herself in Polish politics.
He founded the “Polska 2050” party, the youngest in Poland, and forged an alliance with the oldest: the farmers’ party PSL. The PSL is 128 years old and has been continuously represented in parliament since 1989. Their core electorate lives in rural areas.
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That’s why the PiS is now openly making advances to the Farmers’ Party in order to perhaps get a majority in the Sejm after all. However, the leader of the Peasants’ Party, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, firmly rejected this and recalled that the Peasants’ Party had run with the slogan “Either ‘Third Way’ – or a third term for the PiS.”
This appealed strongly to voters: “Those who voted for us want change, they want a different government, they want to remove PiS from power.”
A broad spectrum
The “Third Way” alliance of “Polska 2050” and the Farmers’ Party is considered moderately conservative, Christian, economically liberal but ecological. From there it’s quite a long way to the “New Left”, the third party in the envisaged coalition. It is also an association in which post-communists and young left-wing movements gather.
She calls for liberal abortion rights, social justice, more affordable housing and less influence of the church on the city. This gave her 8.6 percent in the elections.
Not just harmony
If the three previous opposition parties “Civic Coalition”, “Polska 2050” and “New Left” form the government in Poland, there will be some controversial issues. The “Citizens’ Coalition” and the “New Left” want to introduce legal abortions up to the twelfth week. It is questionable whether this can be done with the more conservative alliance “Polska 2050”.
Despite all the differences, there is much to suggest that the three-party coalition can work. As a “Senate Pact”, they have been working together for years in the Senate, the second chamber of the Polish Parliament – and against the PiS. If the coalition comes into being, it will above all have to prove that it can stick together even without the common opponent PiS.