Politics

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.

There is no need for Europe to be great again. As a community it is currently the greatest economic power, which to a large extent already dictates the rules of the game on global markets. The only viable response to the ongoing challenges is a closer integration of the EU – to maintain the status of a global leader.

The November 2018 communal elections in Slovakia revealed a growing trend. In the battle of party candidates vs. the independents it was more often than not the latter who emerged victorious. Parties have been becoming the political dinosaurs of modern age.

On June 23, 2016, the UK voted to leave the EU. If Czechs and Slovaks were able to separate an entire country, Czechoslovakia, in six months, surely Whitehall and Berlaymont can find a way to separate one EU member state sooner than in six years.

In the summer, the US government sent to Hungary a good friend of President Trump as the new ambassador, David B. Cornstein. His self-proclaimed priority was to save CEU. He failed. Unfortunately, in the eyes of liberty-loving Hungarians, this is a failure of the United States and of America’s leadership.

While the media focuse on the Kremlin’s “hybrid warfare” against the Western democracies or the Chinese social credit system controlling people’s everyday life through mass-surveillance, the illiberal state of Viktor Orbán is also doing its fair share to exercise information control via new digital powers.

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.

Politicians using bluff and masquerade have been unmasked, and leaving the EU turns out to be a humiliation for Britain, not a triumph. Promises of a quick and favorable divorce from the EU for Great Britain – what a surprise – did not work out.

On October 21, 2018, Polish people elected their local and regional representatives who will lead the communities for next five years. The results were a good test before 2019 European and general elections, giving hopes for good liberal and center representations and chances of removing PiS from power.

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.