Populist party poised for election triumph
WARSAW: Poland’s governing rightwing party topped Sunday’s general election, an exit poll showed, expanding its majority thanks to a raft of welfare measures coupled with attacks on LGBT rights and Western values.
The Law and Justice party (PiS) scored 43.6% of the vote for 239 seats, outpacing the centrist Civic Coalition (KO) opposition with 27.4% support (131 seats) and a leftist coalition that took 12.4% (46 seats), according to an Ipsos poll including partial official results which were published early yesterday.
“We have four years of hard work ahead. Poland must change more and it must change for the better,” said PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, whose party controlled 231 seats in the 460-seat lower house of parliament up to now.
“We deserve more,” he said, referring to the projections which suggest PiS falls well short of the 307 seats required to change the constitution — long among Mr Kaczynski’s top priorities.
But experts say that a strong PiS win means it could continue court reforms that risk undermining judicial independence and the rule of law, something likely to further stoke conflict with the European Union.
Should final results confirm its expanded majority, “we can expect the PiS to further limit liberal democracy”, Warsaw University political scientist Anna Sosnowska-Materska said.
Condemning the PiS’s anti-LGBT drive and close church ties, but sharing the PiS’s welfare goals, the left returned
to parliament after a four-year hiatus.
Confederation, a new far-right libertarian party, captured 6.4% support for 13 seats, according to Ipsos. The PSL farmers/Kukiz 15 alliance took 9.1% of the vote for 30 seats.
In office since 2015, Mr Kaczynski’s PiS has focused on poorer rural voters, coupling family values with the introduction of welfare state spending like a popular child allowance, tax breaks for low-income earners and hikes to pensions and the minimum wage.
“The PiS is finally taking care of the weakest, most vulnerable members of society,” Kasia, a 40-year-old psychologist working at a women’s shelter, told AFP after voting in Warsaw.
“I’ve seen it first hand at work.” Mr Kaczynski, who is widely regarded as Poland’s de facto leader, has also stoked deep social division by attacking sexual minorities and rejecting Western liberal values, all with the tacit blessing of Poland’s influential Catholic Church which holds sway over rural voters.
Mr Kaczynski is among several populist leaders in the European Union favouring greater national sovereignty over the federalism championed by powerhouses, namely France and Germany.
The PiS has sought favour with the Trump administration. Poland has long regarded the United States as the primary guarantor of its security within the Nato alliance, as well as a bulwark against neighbouring Russia — its Soviet-era master — with whom tensions still run high.