Good news for conservatives from Poland’s presidential election
Conservative Karol Nawrocki won the second round of the Polish presidential election conducted this weekend.
The margin was narrow, with about 300,000+ votes separating ten million on each side.
When voting stations closed, preliminary exit polls suggested the Left might win, but as the night wore on, Rafal Trzaskowski’s supposed lead evaporated.
(This, in contrast to some American states – like California and Arizona — Poland’s electoral commission seems to have tallied almost all votes cast overnight. “How many Americans does it take to count ballots?”)
Nawrocki’s election continues the winning global run of conservative leaders intent on protecting their national identities, borders, and values.
By contrast, leftist Trzaskowski promised abortion, homosexual marriage, support for some of the heavy-handed measures of the current Tusk government against the opposition, and subservience to the EU.
In the U.S., House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast wrote a letter last week criticizing EU and Soros interference on Trzaskowski’s behalf in the campaign leading up to the second round of Polish presidential elections.
A Nawrocki presidency will lead to a split government in Poland, the relatively powerful presidency in conservative hands holding the left-leaning Prime Minister Donald Tusk – a Europhile – in check.
That’s important, because since coming to power Dec. 13, 2023 (a telling date, the anniversary Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law on his own country in 1981), Tusk has carried on heavy-handed attacks against the former conservative “Law and Justice” government, which ruled Poland from 2016-23.
Tusk justified his purges of media officials, his charges against former government officials, and his ignoring the Constitutional Tribunal by claiming that he was defending democracy against the supposedly authoritarian former government and so needed to conduct a “reckoning” (rozliczenie) against its predecessor.
The term rozliczenie is interesting, because while the Tusk government defended its tactics against a government freely elected twice (2015, 2019) and which also took the Polish presidency in 2020.
By contrast, whenever Polish conservatives – including the former Law and Justice government – sought a “reckoning” with the history of postwar communism in Poland, pressing to “open the files” to make public who was in bed with whom, most of Tusk’s “Civic Platform” party members fought against such public accountability.
Nawrocki will, therefore, check the worst leftist inclinations of Tusk, his party, and his allies through presidential vetoes and the presidential bully pulpit. It also puts him in a position potentially to accelerate parliamentary elections.
In the runup to this weekend’s vote, the Polish left pulled out many tropes familiar to Americans: that Nawrocki had to be defeated to “protect Polish democracy,” that this was a choice between a “xenophobic, nationalist Poland versus a Poland with a European horizon,” that the work of “reckoning” with the former government and the promises of the Tusk government would be impeded by Nawrocki (as they had by the incumbent retiring conservative president, Andrzej Duda), and that Poland had to decide between “Catholic” versus “inclusive” values.
With the close election over and Poland’s electoral map somewhat split like in the United States, the Left is now warning against “polarization” and calling for “building bridges,” a need they never identified during the past 18 months of the Tusk government.
Because there is a strong bipartisan consensus in Poland about the importance of good relations with the United States as well as for mutual burden-sharing (Poland has for years met or exceeded NATO contribution levels), Warsaw’s relations with Washington will likely remain strong. Nawrocki will likely be a serious interlocutor with the Trump administration.
At the same time, Nawrocki will also be a likely check on the Tusk government’s drift towards Brussels and Germany.
Domestic politics are likely, however, to be rockier, as the Tusk government’s ability to pursue its left agenda will be subject to presidential veto. Whether that results in Tusk rebalancing his positions, hoping by appearing more “centrist” to cultivate a “moderate” image, or in staking out his territory on the left through symbolic (losing) votes in Parliament remains to be seen.
John M. Grondelski
This article was first published in the American Thinker here: Good news for conservatives from Poland’s presidential election
