That vote sets up a showdown over the future direction of Poland and whether radical reforms championed by the ruling and nationalist ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, including radical changes in the country’s courts and media, will continue.
Duda’s re-election ensures that the party will be able to continue with policies that have sparked years of conflict with EU institutions over concerns that Poland is backtracking on its democratic commitments and putting the judicial system under political control. Trzaskowski promises that if elected, he will veto any non-liberal change. The ruling party does not have the votes in parliament to override a presidential veto.
Duda played his close relationship with PiS and his electoral program in his post-election speech.
“Today we have a very clear situation: Poland will continue to develop … or calm down … I am the guarantee of maintaining what it has received so far,” he told his followers in Łowicz, a city in central Poland.
It is an appeal for the generous social policies favored by PiS, including lowering the retirement age and a monthly bonus of 500 złoty (€ 112) for children, policies that have been crucial in building the party’s popularity.
Trzaskowski made it clear that those policies will not change, and married him with the promise of building a more liberal country.
“This will not be just a choice between Andrzej Duda and Rafał Trzaskowski,” he said at his post-election event in central Warsaw. “It will be a choice between an open Poland and a Poland that seeks an enemy and a president that seeks to divide.”
Although Duda told his followers that he had won a “decisive” victory, he hoped to win in the first round. But the election originally scheduled for May 10 had to be postponed due to concerns about the coronavirus and a failed attempt to turn it into a mail-only vote. That gave the opposition the opportunity to change candidates, and Trzaskowski ran a much more aggressive campaign that helped regain ground lost by the party’s previous candidate.
Even fight
The fight on July 12 will be very close.
Doubt will have to try to go beyond PiS’s main supporters: people he mobilized with promises of close cooperation with the government, ties to the Roman Catholic Church, and fierce attacks on LGBTQ “ideology”. But that will be difficult since he is so identified with the party.
Trzaskowski will have to assemble a broad anti-PiS coalition, especially by attracting supporters of newcomer politician Szymon Hołownia, a former television host who led a successful insurgent campaign and came in third with 13.3 percent of votes, according to the exit poll.
Trzaskowski contacted Hołownia supporters on Sunday, aided by Hołownia saying after the election that he “would never vote for Duda.”
Trzaskowski will also have to attract some voters for nationalist Krzysztof Bosak, who came in fourth with 7.4 percent. Its voters may seem natural to Duda, but they tend to be even more right-wing than PiS, and suspicious of the ruling party.
That didn’t stop Duda from trying to win them over on Sunday.
Duda said there is not much difference between his views and Bosak’s on Poland. “We think alike on many issues.”
But Bosak’s group, the Confederation, issued a statement saying it “will not support any of the candidates.”
PiS and Civic Platform, the party founded by Donald Tusk, a former Polish prime minister and president of the European Council, have been at war for control of Poland for almost two decades. Tensions over their sharply different views for the country helped push Sunday’s turnout to 62.9 percent, the second-highest level in the history of Poland’s presidential contests.
This article has been updated to note that turnout is the second highest for a presidential election.
