“It is the end of the PiS government,” he proclaimed. Donald Tusk minutes after the official closing of the schools, when the Polish media were just giving the first exit polls for the general elections, in which both the chamber of deputies, the Sejm, and the Senate were elected. The ultra-conservative government party Law and Justice (PiS) of Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki was still the first force, with 36%, while the Civic Platform (PO) of the liberal candidate obtained 31%, according to those first data from the pollster Ipsos. However, the PiS fell short of the majority, while the opposition led by the pro-European Tusk added the necessary votes, supported by the centrist Third Waywith 13%, and the leftist Lewica, with 8.5%. While Tusk raised his arms proclaiming his victory, Morawiecki affirmed his willingness to try to form a government, to receive the task of the president of the country, Andrzej Duda, linked to PiS. Shortly after, sources from the presidency indicated that “by tradition and in accordance with the Constitution”, PiS will receive the task first.
The key to this promotion of Tusk, if confirmed in the official count that probably will not occur until Tuesday, would be in the high participation: 72%, some twelve points above that corresponding to the previous general elections in 2019, according to Ipsos . The Electoral Commission did not provide specific data, but it was announced that participation will probably be the highest achieved since the end of communism. The referendum called at the request of the PiS, with which it sought to legitimize the PiS’s rejection of the migration policy of the European Union (EU), among three other issues, did not reach the minimum participation required to be binding, 50%, but remained at 40%. These data are also estimates and advanced by Ipsos, in the absence of official figures from the electoral authority. The PIS had focused its campaign on the rejection of asylum and the relocation of irregular immigrants and announced that it would block, like Hungary, the EU plan. In addition to the victory in the general elections, he sought the support of the popular vote on that issue.
“I was never so happy with second place,” admitted an excited Tusk, while the PiS leader, J.Aroslaw Kaczynski, He warned that we had to wait for official results. The leader of the far-right spoke out in a similar sense. Confederacy, Slawomir Mentzen, who was at 6.8% according to the exit polls, below his expectations and without options to be the ally that PiS would need to secure a majority. This party brings together the most radical far-right and also libertarians opposed to the social aid implemented by PiS.
The return of Tusk
Tusk voted amid a huge media stir at a polling station somewhat far from the center of Warsaw. The Polish general elections marked the return to national politics of the liberal leader, who between 2007 and 2014 was prime minister of the country, but he left this position to preside over the European Council. He was the only opposition candidate with options to overthrow the monolithic power of PiS, which in addition to the Warsaw government controls the country’s presidency through Andzej Duda.
Much more discreet was the passage through the polls of Prime Minister Morawiecki, and the leader of the PiS and strong man of Polish politics Kaczynski. The commotion generated by Tusk was related to the expectations placed on a political turn in this partner of the EU and NATO which is Poland, but which in the last eight consecutive years with PiS in government has been characterized by constant confrontation with Brussels. A change in the government in favor of Tusk would mark the path to reconciliation with Brussels in Poland, a country that has blocked 35 billion euros from post-pandemic European funds. Warsaw’s multiple conflicts with the EU, especially over the controversial reform of the judiciary that annuls the independence of the Justicehave generated an accumulation of fines and sanctions in European courts.
Urban vote versus rural vote
The PO has its electoral strength in the capital and the cities, while the PiS owes it to the countryside. In cities like Bialystok, 177 kilometers from Warsaw and 45 from the border with Belarus, the scenario is very different from the capital. Until World War II, its population was mostly Jewish; 65,000 of those inhabitants were deported and murdered in the Nazi extermination camp of Treblinka. The unlocking of European funds is also eagerly awaited there. Not only the completion of infrastructural works such as the renewal of the railway in a good part of the country depends on them, but also the money necessary to implement social, family and retirement aid that the PiS has been increasing year after year. . Tusk pledged during the campaign that there would be no cuts.
Loyalty to PiS or EU funds
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“Vladimir Putin He is a terrorist. “The devil, as Stalin was before,” Beate Grela, an 82-year-old retired teacher from Bialystok and PiS voter, told EL PERIODICO, a party that, for her, “guarantees that the Russians will not cross our border again.” She claims he never came close to the border with Belarus. Not even when Poland was a satellite country of Moscow Not even now, with the border fortified thanks to the fence built under the PiS government to protect Poland “from immigrants or enemy soldiers,” he explains in rudimentary French learned in his youth. His son and his grandson “are voters of the others,” he says, alluding to Tusk’s PO.
Bialystok is a panorama similar to that of other cities in the region: a mix of old blocks of buildings from when Poland was part of the Soviet orbit and new constructions built in record time, as if from nowhere, shopping centers, fast food restaurants and a huge area around the renovated train station, still to be completed, dotted with signs reminding us that all this is being built with EU funds. The mayor of Bialystock is Tadeusz Truskolaski of the PO, as is his son, Sejm deputy Krzysztof Truskolaski, whose face is omnipresent on the city’s election posters. “Bialystock looks ahead, towards Europe,” says the retiree’s grandson, 24 years old, father of three, mechanic and Tusk voter.