Poland re-elects its anti-LGBT president

POLISH President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who ran a campaign with homophobic and antiSemitic overtones, narrowly won a second five-year term in a bitterly fought election.

Duda defeated the liberal Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, who said he hoped Duda’s second term would be “really different” to his first.

He received 51.21% of Sunday’s vote to Trzaskowski’s 48.79% the state electoral commission said.

His supporters celebrated what they saw as a clear mandate for him and the right-wing ruling party that backs him, Law and Justice, to continue on a path that has reduced poverty but raised concerns that democracy is under threat.

Critics and human rights groups expressed concerns that Duda’s victory would boost illiberal tendencies not only at home but also within the European Union, which has struggled to halt an erosion of rule of law in Hungary under prime minister Viktor Orban.

Zselyke Csaky, an expert on central Europe with the human rights group Freedom House, said Duda’s victory gives the party “essentially free rein” until parliamentary elections in 2023 “to do away with limits on its power and work towards destroying Poland’s independent institutions, such as the judiciary or the media”.

The close race reflected the deep cultural divisions in Poland.

Duda’s campaign was dominated by issues of culture in which the government, state media and the influential Roman Catholic Church all mobilised in support of him and sought to stoke fears of Jews, LGBT people and Germans.

Duda was also endorsed by US President Donald Trump last month who said that Duda was doing a “terrific job”.