The public image of political mastermind Jarosław Kaczyński and his successful and expansive Law and Justice party was shattered by a series of articles published by the Gazeta Wyborcza daily starting on January 29. The image of Jarosław Kaczyński, who once famously said that “you don’t go into politics for money”, was built around a tale of modesty, honesty, lack of bank account, and too big suits he wore. His official property declaration for 2017 showed…
We are on the brink of a very busy political season in Poland. The year 2018 might have been a prelude to the election year, but the times of decision making are still ahead. The decisions that will have an impact on not merely one electoral term but the consequences of which will last a decade to come.
Today, as I am writing this piece, I’m undoubtedly setting the cat among the pigeos and I’m looking forward to see the maddened pigeons to advance. Let them even attack me, personally. By setting the aforementioned cat among the pigeons I’m hereby declaring: let the nationalists parade and let the Law and Justice (PiS) party support them.
There are liberal democratic parties such as moderately conservative Civic Platform (formerly led by Donald Tusk) or liberal Nowoczesna. They can base their voter’s value proposition on individualism yet their resources are far from Kaczynski’s party. There are other players, too.
A letter from American senators to PM Beata Szydlo, a visit from the Venice Commission, a debate about the situation in our country in the European Parliament: what else has to happen for the Law and Justice’s government to open their eyes and see what is going on?
The new Polish right-wing government is often labelled as nationalistic, populistic and radical. However it tries to reject this epithets, they are all true. The “good change” is a political slogan of the Law and Justice government that marks the major shift that has recently been introduced in Poland.
Due to the lack of a two-third majority which would enable Law and Justice to change the Constitution officially and to implement the ideas similar to those of Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, the governing party is often hovering on the edge of breaching the Constitution.
The mass scale of the social response to what Law and Justice is doing, the Committee for the Defence of Democracy, which within two days gathered over 30,000 supporters may be just a preview of a massive political force that shall defend the rule of law, its sense of belonging to Europe and liberal democracy which it deems indispensable, or even ‘holy’.
