On November 28, 1918, Józef Piłsudski signed an electoral law allowing Polish women to vote. This was one of the fundamental changes of Polish law that has contributed to regaining the independnce after hundreds of years without it.
Mazowiecki proved that the strategy of dialogue is really the one that enables achieving big goals. The recent decision of the two main opposition parties in Poland – Nowoczesna and Civic Platform – to emabrk on a closer cooperation in the forthcoming 2018 municipal elections is a step in this direction.
When, back in April 2015, I had the honour and pleasure of setting up NowoczesnaPL with Ryszard Petru and 19 other eminent individuals, we didn’t expect that Law and Justice (PiS) would be able to ruin Poland to the extent that it has. For ruining the country is exactly what it is doing.
Katarzyna Lubnauer’s declarations (made right after winning in the vote for the leader of the Nowoczesna party) in favor of integral liberalism – both ideological and economic – are a beacon of hope that the new leadership may bring a change in quality of the party.
Last Saturday, the Nowoczesna party has elected a new leader: Katarzyna Lubnauer replaced Ryszard Petru at the helm of the Polish opposition party, the most liberal one in the country there is. It was high time Nowoczesna stopped being associated chiefly with Petru.
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.
In some countries (including Poland) parental leave can be fully flexibly divided between both parents. This sounds great, but in reality reinforces gender inequality. Therefore, the Commission has recently proposed the parental leave to become an individual right for mothers and fathers without a transfer of the four months to the other parent.
The government in Warsaw is considered to be one of the most conservative in the EU. In the country with practically no regulations for LGBT+ community, Law and Justice – the ruling party – manages to find the way to limit their rights even further.
On June 3, 2017, the delegates of the Extraordinary Convention of .Nowoczesna have endorsed Paweł Rabiej – the co-founder of .Nowoczesna – as the person who would run for the office of the Warsaw mayor. Thus, .Nowoczesna has become the first party to officially present a candidate.
It is not true that we face a drastic crisis of liberal movements – it is the alternative to these organizations that has changed radically as a result of a deep structural crisis of the left wing. To put it plainly and oversimplifying a little, the democratic struggle in the Western world takes place between the “liberal” and “non-liberal” camps.
