The restructuring of the state in a latently authoritarian direction is being pushed even further. The government’s worrying trend is particularly evident in the way it is trying to instrumentalize the COVID-19 crisis for the upcoming presidential elections on May 10.
I’m truly rooting for the bill on separating the church from the state, which was announced by Polish Initiative headed by Barbara Nowacka on Epiphany. Of course, let’s not kid ourselves that such an initiative has any chance of succeeding in the current Polish Parliament.
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.
Ever since Law and Justice (PiS) came to power, the voices of those who think that the liberal formula has been exhausted or at least needs a solid modification have manifested with particular intensity. Liberalism of today does not need a social update, but a return to the roots.
The future political party of the president of Słupsk will be the next party in a galaxy of political “projects” based on one single pillar – the popularity of one man. In Polish politics, this has happened many times in the last decade and the results were almost always the same.
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.
