Poland heads toward toxic, polarized and uncertain election

“There is a lot of historical enmity between the two leaders,” Lash said.

Tusk and Kaczyński have dominated Polish politics since 2005, when they both attacked and ousted a left-wing social-democratic alliance in government since 2001.

“They even talked about forming a government together, and then the two parties took over different parts of the electorate and built up hatred, mutual accusations,” Lash said. Now, he said “the two parties basically hate each other.”

In broad terms, Law and Justice draws its support from working-class, rural and older voters who felt they were shunted aside and forgotten about during Poland's rapid modernization and advancement following the fall of communism in 1989, Szczerbiak said.

“It got elected on the basis of a critique of the elites and institutions that have emerged from the transition to democracy after the collapse of communism,” he said. “It was committed to radically reforming the institutions of the Polish state.”

Since seizing power in 2015, Law and Justice has taken aim at Poland's judiciary, which it accuses of being dominated by communist-era judges and officials who had, in their view, corrupted the legal and political system.

Law and Justice pushed into law an overhaul of the judiciary that led Warsaw into a bruising court fight with EU institutions that accuse Poland's hard-right conservatives of seeking to quash the judiciary's independence and seize total control over the levers of the state.

“The opposition and much of the cultural legal establishment has been very, very critical of this,” Szczerbiak said.

In 2021, the European Court of Justice ruled Poland was in violation of EU laws and ordered it pay hefty fines unless it rolled back its reforms. So far, though, Poland has avoided paying the fines.

Szczerbiak said Law and Justice is determined to revamp the Polish state.

“If Law and Justice wins the election, then it will push on with that project and take it forward and try to complete it,” Szczerbiak said. “If it doesn't, well, the opposition will try and unravel it.”

Szczerbiak said the two main parties represent very different sides of Polish society.

“It is divisions about real issues,” he said. “It's people who do have a very different view of what the nature of the Polish transition was, what the nature of the post-1989 settlement was.”

He said less-well-off and less-educated rural and small-town voters, many who hold more traditional and conservative values, tend to vote for Law and Justice, while the opposition is backed by better-off and better-educated voters with socially and culturally liberal values who generally live in bigger towns and cities.

This political cleavage, he said, “maps onto social constituencies,” and the conflict is not based around “ideological differences that are just sort of hanging in the air.”

In rural parts of Poland, he said many people feel that — unlike those living in urban areas — they didn't benefit from Poland's economic liberalization following the end of communism.

“That was a key element in Law and Justice's appeal,” he said.

Law and Justice has responded to this sense of grievance by implementing social welfare programs meant to redistribute wealth and bestow a sense of dignity and prestige on those who are less well-off, he said.

Lash said social welfare programs were cut during the 1990s in the rush to adopt neoliberal economic policies and turn Poland into a free-market liberal democracy.

Its programs have included raising pensions (many of its voters are older) and rewarding families with children with substantial financial benefits.

“They've said: 'Look, we are the first government that tries to make sure that everyone kind of benefits” from Poland's economic advances, Szczerbiak said.

Lash said Law and Justice has demonstrated a “strong social conscience” that it couches in right-wing, nationalistic terms, such as “protecting the family” and not in left-wing notions that “everyone deserves their chance.”

The opposition has accused Law and Justice of essentially “bribing voters” with its social programs.

But Szczerbiak said Law and Justice can highlight successes with its welfare programs, such as a drop in the number of children living in poverty and evidence showing more Poles can afford holidays.

“There is hard data that shows it has had an impact,” he said.

Law and Justice's appeal, though, runs deeper than its social welfare programs because it's also won voters over with its conservative social agenda, including its opposition to abortion, gay rights and immigration. It backs Poland's near-total ban on abortion and ban on recognizing same-sex unions.

“Law and Justice also says that, 'Not only have you not benefited economically to the same extent, but also the people who've been running Poland have treated your values with contempt,'” he said.

Szczerbiak said Law and Justice has given voice to conservative segments of Polish society who feel they are looked down upon with contempt by urban liberals for making religion, patriotism and traditional family values of core importance.

“It's a government that gives a sense that it values people who are not just the urban elite,” he said.

But Law and Justice's winning strategy may be running out of steam. Poland, like much of the EU, has suffered from high inflation, and that's eating away at the increased purchasing power of Poles who've benefited from its generous welfare programs, Szczerbiak said.

“This has been part of Law and Justice's problem: Those constituencies have become a bit disillusioned,” he said.

The opposition argues the government's welfare spending has come at the expense of investment in public services, such as health care and schools.

“The argument here is that if you don't improve public services, a lot of these people end up spending a lot of their money to make up for the shortfall” in public spending, he said.

Also at stake in this election is Poland's role within the EU.

Under Law and Justice, Warsaw has tried to stake out an independent foreign policy that diverges from the European mainstream, dominated by the Franco-German axis, and construct new alliances with similar anti-EU forces, such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

“This argument is that Polish interests haven't always coincided with the interests of that EU political establishment,” Szczerbiak said.

Warsaw's sudden U-turn on arming Ukraine was an example of this, but so too has been its stubborn refusal to accept refugees and asylum seekers, its demands for $1.3 trillion in World War II reparations from Germany, its rejection of the concept that EU law is superior to the Polish constitution and its decision to challenge EU edicts, such as requirements to drastically reduce fossil fuel emissions.

Tusk and his Civic Platform, by contrast, would likely return Poland to the EU mainstream and rebuild bridges with Berlin and Brussels.

“Clearly, federal Europe wants the other party to win,” Lash said. “They're clearly more friendly to the EU.”

But even if the opposition parties manage to form a ruling coalition, their ability to govern would be greatly constrained because the country's president, Andrzej Duda, is aligned with Law and Justice, and he has the power to veto legislation.

Another major obstacle for the opposition comes from Poland's Constitutional Tribunal, whose members have been elected by the Sejm when the Law and Justice held a majority, Szczerbiak said. The court has the power to strike down Polish laws.

Also, the opposition parties have little in common.

“It ranges from people on the radical left through to socially conservative agrarians,” Szczerbiak said. “The only thing they agree on is they want Law and Justice out.”

In the event Law and Justice return to power, Lash said the EU would be forced to reluctantly accept working with Warsaw.

“Poland is very important to the EU, so I don't know what they really could do,” he said. “They're not going to kick Poland out.”

In this election campaign, the subject of immigration has become central, with both Law and Justice and Civic Platform trying to outdo each other in vowing to stop illegal immigration.

Earlier this month, Law and Justice voted against an EU plan to distribute asylum seekers across the bloc from frontier countries like Italy, Spain and Greece. This quota system soared to the top of the agenda in September after the Sicilian island of Lampedusa was overwhelmed with large numbers of asylum seekers.

But Law and Justice's image as the tough-on-migration party has been seriously dented after Polish media aired allegations that Polish foreign consulates and private companies engaged in visa fraud by accepting large payments from migrants in exchange for speeding up their applications.

Lash said the scale of the visa scandal remains unclear, but that hasn't stopped the opposition from accusing Law and Justice of hypocrisy and failing to stop migration despite its boasts about protecting Poland's borders by building elaborate and costly fences along the eastern frontier with Belarus.

“Law and Justice are talking about Lampedusa — 'We're protecting Poles from the relocation of migrants from Asia and Africa' — and the opposition is saying: 'Well, you've let all these people in,'” Lash said. “They are somewhat racializing it as well.”

The visa fraud allegations highlight a quandary for the government as businesses are demanding a relaxation of visa requirements because of labor shortages in Poland's vibrant economy, Lash said.

“Poland needs more immigrants,” Lash said. “Poles themselves are not prepared to do the jobs immigrants will do. It's a developed Western country now. People don't want to pick fruit.”

He continued: “This issue of migration is so powerful and important because everyone is trying to use it to say different things.”

Szczerbiak said the outcome of the election will depend on which side is able to get its voters out.

“When you see changes in the opinion polls, it's not because people are crossing over from one to the other, it's simply that one side's supporters are either mobilized or demobilized,” he said. “That's the name of the game: Getting your own supporters out.”

Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.

Follow @cainburdeau

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