The parliamentary election held this Sunday in Poland brought no surprises. The ruling Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska, PO) won an expected victory. After the reckoning of 63.74 percent of all ballots, Donald Tusk’s party has 39 percent votes, whereas Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s opposition Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc, PiS) gets 30 percent, while Palikot’s Movement (Ruch Palikota) comes third with 9.9 percent votes. The fourth and fifth places in the election go to the member of the government coalition, the Polish People’s Party (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe, PSL), led by vice Prime Minister Waldemar Pawliak, with 8.6 percent, and to the Democratic Left Alliance (Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej, SLD) with 8.2 percent votes, respectively. Out of nine parties only five got over the five-percent electoral threshold.
Late on Sunday night, the prime minister said while meeting with his supporters: “I would like to thank all who voted for us, as well as those who didn’t, since we will bear joint responsibility for Poland in the four years to come.” Meanwhile, his major opponent Kaczynski admitted his defeat, remarking: “We respect the results of the election, but our task for the next four years is to convince millions of Poles that a change is necessary.”
Thus the Civic Platform has become the first ruling party since 1989 to have won parliamentary election twice in a row. We would like to remind that in 2007, the Civic Platform won the parliamentary election with 41.51 percent, while Law and Justice was supported by 32.11 percent of voters. They gained 209 and 166 seats of the
Sejm respectively.
This time the Civic Platform has three more seats in the Sejm, that is, 212. Law and Justice left the election with 158, Palikot’s Movement, 39, the PSL, 27, and SLD with 23 representatives to the lower house of Poland’s legislature. Immediately after the election, Tusk and Pawliak declared their willingness to create a PO-PSL coalition with 239 members in the Sejm.
The observers note that a prompt creation of the coalition is necessary due to Poland’s presidency over the European Union. The analysts believe that the Tusk team had a major advantage, the economic growth, which has reached four percent this year in Poland. After the election campaign, at the negotiations with Brussels, the prime minister and his team promised to achieve more in the framework of the development of the EU’s new financial budget. Besides, the head of the Polish government promised to improve the relations with Russia, despite the existing differences. By the way, Radoslaw Sikorski, head of the Polish ministry of foreign affairs, stated after the election that the victory of Tusk’s Civic Platform shows the will of the Polish people to build good and stable relations with neighbor nations.
Palikot’s Movement coming third became the surprise of this year’s parliamentary election. The leader of the movement, Janusz Palikot, accounts for his success with the sympathies citizens have for his revolutionary views.
The Day asked Jacek Zakowski, a permanent contributor to the Polish weekly Polityka, to comment on the outcome of the election, share about the possible changes in the new Polish government, and explain the phenomenon of Palikot’s Movement.
“From the viewpoint of current policy, the results of the Polish election, with the ruling coalition remaining in power for the first time since 1989, mean stability and consistency. After the election there could be only slight changes, affecting a few politicians. In particular, this can affect education and energy. Even for those departments whose heads could be replaced the changes will rather improve the efficiency, speed, and style of management than alter their major goals.
“The most dramatic change for the Sejm is the arrival of Palikot’s Movement, acting as opposition to the conventional majority on Poland’s political arena. Palikot is mostly supported by the urban youth, generation E (Erasmus, the EU international student exchange program), who stand out against the rest of society due to their openness to cultural change and who champion Poland’s deeper integration and assimilation to the West. The older fans of Palikot’s Movement are mostly individuals who support temporal state and the restrictions on the role of the Catholic Church. The presence of this movement in the parliament is likely to speed up the implementation of at least some moderate reforms on morals, such as acknowledgement of domestic partnership and cohabitation.
“In terms of domestic policy, the painful defeat of the post-communist left force (SLD) is very important, which will mean the withdrawal of its leader Grzegorz Napieralski. Napieralski lost to Palikot in the first place because, less than a year before the election, he gave up his plan to change generations and create a consistent left party. Influenced by ex-President Aleksander Kwasniewski, he switched to a conservative and economically liberal lifestyle of a 60-year-old leader, allied with an employers’ organization, and sought for voters in the center, dominated by the Civic Platform.
“Besides, in relations with Poland’s eastern neighbors, especially Ukraine and Russia, the outcome of the election will not entail dramatic changes. They can encourage the future government to seek closer relations with Moscow, as well as a closer rapprochement of Ukraine with the European Union, which was called into question after the difficult Eastern Partnership summit.”
