The second round of Poland’s presidential election, which will take place on 12 July, is likely to be a tight contest between incumbent Andrzej Duda, who faithfully implements the wishes of the right-wing populist Law and Justice (PiS) government, and Rafał Trzaskowski, mayor of Warsaw and candidate of the neoliberal Civic Platform (PO). While the position of President of Poland does not give as much power as in the presidential systems in the USA or France, it is a position that can constitutionally block the government’s actions and potentially destabilize the current regime.
Duda vs Trzaskowski
President Duda came out of the first round in the lead, with 43% of the popular vote. His support is largely a reflection of the attitude towards the policies of the PiS government, since Duda himself isn’t a particularly independent or charismatic politician. He is sarcastically called “the chairman’s pen” as his main role is to sign as quickly as possible any PiS legislation that the party’s chairman, Kaczynski, deems to be urgent, so it can become law. This result indicates that a solid core of support still exists, particularly among the elderly and farmers, but also among a layer of the working class. Duda’s campaign was, however, also aided by the blatant and shameless propaganda of the state television broadcaster — TVP nicknamed the TVPiS — which didn’t even pretend to create the semblance of impartiality.
However, this election is a much bigger challenge than any election since the PiS victory in 2015. It may have seemed just a few months ago that Duda’s victory was “in the bag” given the popularity of PiS’s social policies such as the 500 zloty child benefit. But the COVID-19 epidemic and the resulting economic crisis have contributed to the erosion of support, particularly among the petty-bourgeois layer of small businessmen. The way that PiS has dealt with the crisis so far is also potentially damaging to its support among the workers. The so called “anti-crisis shields”, i.e. legislation aimed at providing relief for businesses as well as stripping away the labour code, and other workers’ rights, are a clear manifestation of the class character of this government, at least to the advanced layer of the working class.
The government’s blunders on other fronts, such as the highly unpopular attempt to organize the presidential election by post during the height of the pandemic (which eventually didn’t come to fruition, yet cost about 70 million zloty / 16 million euro to organize), or the recent homophobic campaign against LGBT+ people, seem to have mobilized voters against the government on the basis of growing anxiety and fear of moving closer to a Hungarian style bonapartist dictatorship.
Trzaskowski, the PO candidate, turned out to be the main beneficiary of these fears, gaining over 30% of vote in the first round. This may not seem like a big success for the main bourgeois party in Poland, but it comes after a long period of PO, and the opposition in general, not being able to rally any significant support or even send out a cohesive political appeal.
While Trzaskowski himself is of a neoliberal pedigree — as the mayor of Warsaw he did nothing to stop the criminal re-privatization of housing — he might now channel the votes of other bourgeois parties, the Left and voters concerned about the future of democratic rights in Poland.
“Protest vote”
The first round of the election saw Szymon Hołownia, a TV celebrity and avowed catholic previously uninvolved in politics, take third place with 14% of the vote. His relatively high score represents a certain disdain for official politics from a section of voters, as well as high mobilization of voters who cast their votes for the first time, like the youth. This candidate, while not representing any concrete programme himself, might turn out to be crucial for shifting the young and disillusioned voters towards Trzaskowski in the name of “saving democracy”.
The far right
Among a myriad of far right candidates, a clear lead was shown with 7% of the vote for the candidate of Konfederacja — a far right coalition with elements spanning from fascistic to libertarian followers of the ultra-capitalist philosophy of Ludwig von Mises. While the vote itself is not very different in numbers from the previous dispersed scores of the far right, a worrying effect of the shifting of the official political propaganda to far-right nationalism can be seen. Not only that, after Hołownia, the far right mobilized the second largest number of non-voters. Among young voters, aged 18–29, the Konfederacja candidate won as much as 22% of the vote. The far right candidate is now courted by both PiS and PO to support their respective candidates. PiS will most likely try to attract Konfederacja’s voters with even more nationalistic, racist and homophobic rhetoric than previously, while PO’s Trzaskowski has already declared in a tweet, that his and the far right’s economical ideal is “pretty much the same”.
This is unfortunately an example of how unreliable capitalist liberals are in defending democratic rights. They will cosy up to the far right and even fascists if they see the prospect of political gain, or if the capitalist class gives a green light to vicious anti-worker policies to save its profits. While we expect hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to cast a vote for Trzaskowski, in the hope that they have a slight chance to block the road to a right-wing dictatorship, we cannot feed into these illusions. The only way to truly fight against the further criminalization of women’s rights and the LGBT+ population is a mass movement that could take inspiration from the historic 2016 movements, as well as arm itself with more working-class and combative methods of struggle.
Another aspect of Trzaskowski’s potential victory is that given his and his party’s neoliberal record, while with a mouthful of anti-PiS rhetoric, he would support even sharper attacks on the working and living standards of the working class in some form of “national unity” action. Right now, each new version of the “anti-crisis shield” adopted by parliament takes away some portion of workers’ rights. A gate is being opened for mass redundancies in the public sector and the breaking-up of collective bargaining agreements by the bosses, a process already started, for example, by the steel-manufacturing giant Arcelor-Mittal. While the heads of the workers’ movement seems to have been stunned by the effect of the COVID-19 crisis and workers’ resistance has so far been quite limited, conditions for explosions in the factories, hospitals and the public sector will develop.
The Left
The Left, a newly-formed parliamentary left coalition of the right-wing social-democrats (SLD), the left liberal ‘Wiosna’ and Razem, designated Robert Biedroń as it’s candidate. Biedroń was the first openly gay mayor to be elected, and at the height of his popularity reached 10–15% in opinion polls. However, it soon became clear that he is no candidate for working class people, especially during a time of crisis and brutal polarization. The Left and Biedroń failed in their goal of crystallizing their middle-class liberal electorate, and failed even more to gain ground among the layer of disenfranchised workers, people sacked from casual “civil-contracts” etc. His mushy rhetoric, which seemed more like the product of an advertising company than a call to action, combined with a lack of credibility landed Biedroń a meagre 2% of the vote.
The second round of this election will see a battle of lesser-evilisms. To a layer of workers, a vote for PiS will be seen as a security measure against the return of the neoliberals to office; to a layer of the youth, a vote for Trzaskowski will be seen as a brake on the anti-democratic and oppressive course of the regime. While we understand these fears and hopes we need to make clear that neither of these votes can guarantee the working class a safe escape from austerity and oppression. Whatever the result on 12 July, the ruling class will face turmoil, and will try to make the working class pay the bill. The role of the left — tragically missing in action now — is to prepare the workers for upheavals, and build a fighting force — a champion of struggle against austerity as well as for the democratic rights of the oppressed.
