The popular Warsaw mayor, Trzaskowski did not join the election campaign until mid-May, but he set the tone from the beginning. The 48-year-old politician of the opposition Civic Platform (PO) and former European Minister is a feared opponent of the PiS.
During one of his campaign speeches, the current president of Poland, Andrzej Duda, who runs for re-election, compared promoting “LGBT ideology” to something worse than communism. This statement has led to a spiral of hatred.
The presidential election in Poland, which was cancelled at short notice in May, will now take place on June 28. The new opposition candidate, Rafal Trzaskowski, is now positioning himself as the strongest challenger to incumbent Andrzej Duda.
The delayed elections give the opposition a small but significant window of opportunity to make known the responsibilities of the office of president – to make often tricky decisions for the good of the nation. President Duda has already shown to be Kaczynski’s president, not the people’s president.
Today is Wednesday, May 6, three days before the planned presidential election in Poland and it is still not known if and when they will be held.
The increasingly autocratic tendencies observed in Poland and Hungary during the COVID-19 crisis have alarmed the EU. With street protests currently banned, human rights activists fear that the pandemic will be used by national conservative governments to consolidate their power and undermine democracy and human rights.
The conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government has conducted a calculated attack on the rule of law in Poland since it came into power in 2015, securing an overall majority in the Sejm, the lower house of the Parliament.
The human rights of women and children in Poland are at risk. The government is exploiting the fact that due to social distancing restrictions women are unable to protest against a barbaric legislation which was passed in its first reading in Sejm
The 2019 European Parliament election campaign was quite exceptional. First of all, because of the extraordinary political circumstances surrounding it. But also due to the election results and the themes of the campaign that determined a landslide victory of one of the parties. So, what happened in Poland?
PiS’s politics has left Poland looking down the barrel of a health and economic crisis that can result in widespread discontent. Instead of focusing on protecting its citizens, the party is further supplying the country with an additional constitutional crisis.
