Polish Politics

[Martinus]

So, I thought about starting a thread, given that (if we are unlucky) Polish politics may become as "interesting" as Hungarian one later this year.

As you know this year is a double election year, with Presidential elections in Spring (in fact on Sunday is the run off vote) and Parliamentary elections in autumn.

The run-off vote is between Mr Komorowski and Mr Duda. Mr Komorowski is a relatively unremarkable incumbent, supported by the ruling centre-right wing PO who came second (by a hair) in the first round. Mr Duda is a younger more energetic challenger supported by PiS (Kaczynski, head of PiS, is not running - probably because he is seen as too toxic) who came first.

Mr Duda has a relatively smaller but much more disciplined electorate (there are the people who think Poland is going to hell in handbasket; PO are thieves; the Smolensk plane crash was an assassination; and Poland is ruled by traitors and Western arse-lickers). Mr Komorowski has probably larger potential appeal, but after 10 years of PO rule (which has been not unsuccesful but rather bland and very centrist and "careful") there is a substantial feeling of ennui and annoyance with the ruling party. So it looked like Duda may actually end up winning, because the typical PO electorate (relatively succesful middle class) were going to stay home and just let Duda win (admittedly, he has been quite succesful in projecting a "more-moderate-than-PiS" image during the campaign). Then there is the nationalist/populist right who think Duda is too moderate (but would vote for him as he is more Catholic and nationalistic than Komorowski) and the left who dislike both but some of whom were vowing to vote Duda to "shake things up".

Komorowski was really trailing behind in polls until the last Monday's first televised Presidential debate, where he came much better than his opponent - who admittedly blew the rouse by, among others, asking a question attacking the incumbent for apologising for Poles' role in Holocaust and thus painting himself as an antisemite to the more moderate electorate (this is in fact one of the reasons I decided to go to the polls and vote Komorowski rather than staying home).

So it is a toss-up. Now, even if Duda loses, in autumn PiS may actually win - while we have a proportional election system, it is heavily skewed to favour the winners so even if they get, say, 35% of the popular vote but come first, they may have a Parliamentary majority. Furthermore, because of the constant war on the left side between post-communists and liberal left party (the one I voted for in the last elections), Polish left is essentially annihilated and may not even get into the Parliament at all (a party needs to get at least 5% of the national vote to get any MPs).

So we may very well end up with the Parliament where PiS has the majority; PO comes second and is at the same time the most leftist Parliamentary party (being, generally, centre-right/moderately conservative but pro-European) with the rest being split between various right wing populists. If this happens, having Komorowski as the President may be the only thing saving us from full Orbanisation of Polish politics by PiS (as the President gets a veto which can only be overturned with a 2/3 Parliamentary majority - something hopefully PiS and their potential parterns won't get).

So it is looking bleak.

[Barrister]

I dunno - the part about the weak and non-existent left sounds pretty good to me.

[Martinus]

I dunno - the part about the weak and non-existent left sounds pretty good to me.

You need left wing - not necessarily in power, but to champion causes such as gay rights, gender equality, care for the poor and the like. Without strong pressure from the labour, the UK tories would have never introduced same sex marriage, for example.

[Valmy]

Dear God. I mean I realize PO is not your cup of tea but every sane patriot should make sure they stay in power, in the Presidency anyway. Maybe a party you prefer more might make it next time.

[Barrister]

I dunno - the part about the weak and non-existent left sounds pretty good to me.

You need left wing - not necessarily in power, but to champion causes such as gay rights, gender equality, care for the poor and the like. Without strong pressure from the labour, the UK tories would have never introduced same sex marriage, for example.

I am... unconvinced...

[Valmy]

I dunno - the part about the weak and non-existent left sounds pretty good to me.

You need left wing - not necessarily in power, but to champion causes such as gay rights, gender equality, care for the poor and the like. Without strong pressure from the labour, the UK tories would have never introduced same sex marriage, for example.

Yeah in Poland and Hungary the left wing parties seem completely irrelevant. Is this typical for the neighborhood?

[Valmy]

I am... unconvinced...

Right wing parties in Europe. Not really that awesome.

[Admiral Yi]

Right wing parties in Europe. Not really that awesome.

Center right parties in Europe on the other hand do tend to be pretty awesome.

[Martinus]

I dunno - the part about the weak and non-existent left sounds pretty good to me.

You need left wing - not necessarily in power, but to champion causes such as gay rights, gender equality, care for the poor and the like. Without strong pressure from the labour, the UK tories would have never introduced same sex marriage, for example.

Yeah in Poland and Hungary the left wing parties seem completely irrelevant. Is this typical for the neighborhood?

I don't have exact data but I would say it is likely - this is because (i) certain nationalist right wing parties (such as PiS in Poland) are actually pretty socialist when it comes to stuff like taxing the rich, being pro "little people" and the like (at least in their slogans if not in practice - for example PiS rule in 2005 gave us the lowest CIT), (ii) there is a lot of stigma for calling yourself leftist because of the still existing communist association (it does not help than in many countries communists essentially became the modern social-democrats, thus hogging the "spot" for modern leftists who are not linked to the past regime), (iii) the people are backward (communism wasn't actually progressive on social issues) so attitudes towards stuff like gay rights are changing very slowly.

Of course this also means that you have at least three types of leftists (post-communists; real socialists; and progressivists) who do not really see eye-to-eye, so a big tent leftist party, similar to Democrats in the US, has not yet emerged.

[Valmy]

Right wing parties in Europe. Not really that awesome.

Center right parties in Europe on the other hand do tend to be pretty awesome.

True. PiS though is not that.

[Martinus]

Right wing parties in Europe. Not really that awesome.

Center right parties in Europe on the other hand do tend to be pretty awesome.

But they are very easy to blame - because they refuse to give people a "vision" (our ex-PM, now President of the European Council, Mr Tusk once famously quipped that if you have a "vision", your place is not in politics but in a looney bin) and are more content with simply managing and administering - so when things start to go wrong (even if they go wrong in a relatively cushiony way - as Poland has through the recent crisis) people begin to grumble.

They have also the unenviable position of being seen as progressive anti-Catholic and anti-Polish Euro-sodomites by the right and obscurantist conservative slow moving country bumpkins by the left.

[Valmy]

But they are very easy to blame - because they refuse to give people a "vision" (our ex-PM, now President of the European Council, Mr Tusk once famously quipped that if you have a "vision", your place is not in politics but in a looney bin) and are more content with simply managing and administering - so when things start to go wrong (even if they go wrong in a relatively cushiony way - as Poland has through the recent crisis) people begin to grumble.

They have also the unenviable position of being seen as progressive anti-Catholic and anti-Polish Euro-sodomites by the right and obscurantist conservative slow moving country bumpkins by the left.

It is always hard for the center to hold. But hold it must.

[Martinus]

Right wing parties in Europe. Not really that awesome.

Center right parties in Europe on the other hand do tend to be pretty awesome.

True. PiS though is not that.

No, PO is that. I think people are just tired of them. And at the same time, because for many years they have been running on the anti-PiS fear, they have grown somewhat lazy and arrogant ("at least we are not PiS"). Since after 10 years, you have a lot of younger votes who do not really remember the 2 years of PiS rule, and besides, people generally tend to forget things after a while, this strategy has eventually started to fail.

The leftists, of course, in all of this, are dumbasses (at least it is not all the left who want to vote PiS to spite PO - many of us actually do hold our nose, clench our teeth and vote for PO).

[Martinus]

By the way, one new fixture for capturing the "protest vote" is this rockman and "popular tribune", Paweł Kukiz, who came third in the elections (he got over 20% of popular vote, which is quite a feat for an independent candidate). He is a very much wild card (and a bit of an idiot) with a weird mix of views, which are all over the place (sort of occupy Wall Street meets Tea Party type). He is closer to PiS than PO but I guess different enough from both.

He has not really presented any programme (or a plan to start a party yet) and his key demand right now is to introduce majority vote system for Parliamentary elections, saying it will make it more representative. Which is precisely the opposite (just look at the last elections in the UK)...

[Martinus]

Anyways, if you want me to get into details, the reason for the curious state of Polish politics comes down to demographics. Since 1989 there have been what I personally refer to as three ages - the golden, the silver and the bronze age.

The golden age started in 1989 and ended in the second half of the 90s. This was the age when all the today's movers and shakers got into politics and business. If you had even a bit of cash, or knew how to speak English and had a decent degree, you could get a really great job or position. The problem (at least in the eyes of PiS, but I do not necessarily say they are wrong), the people who were best placed to do so (because they could had been sent off to Western universities to study in the 1980s and so on) were the children of communist nomenclature. Those who could not benefit from the world of new opportunities were left by the wayside and became today's "old church ladies" - the hard PiS electorate.

Then came the silver age, which ended, I would say, around the time we joined the EU - so in 2004. Poland wasn't a "Wild West" of opportunities any more, but if you worked hard and got educated you could still land a very good job at this time, as the market was still quite young and the demand for skilled workforce was still higher than the supply. This is when people like me got into the job market and ended up very comfortable - we are not the movers and shakers, but we are the privileged, upper middle class. These people, now with young kids, mortgages and good jobs vote for PO, because they want stability above all else.

And then came the bronze age. The demographic boom entered the market and found all the good jobs already taken. Those who were lucky - and were kids of the golden age winners were already set and did not need to care about jobs and the like. Those who weren't so lucky finally found themselves in a really precarious, uncertain position (this is the generation out of whom a lot of people initially emigrated to the UK). This is also the generation who ended up taking Swiss francs mortgages and got screwed on that. And the like. They are effectively frustrated and cockblocked by life. These are the people who vote for the likes of Kukiz or Korwin Mikke (the right wing populist with a bow tie) - and they are most Tea Party style libertarian.

Leftists do not really fit very well into this picture, unless you are really ideological.