On Sunday, Poland holds its presidential election, largely offering a choice between candidates from the broad right wing of the political spectrum. In the government camp is Rafał Trzaskowski, representing prime minister Donald Tusk’s neoliberal Civic Platform. Then there is Karol Nawrocki, backed by Jarosław Kaczyński’s far-right Law and Justice (PiS), which ruled the country from 2015 to 2023. Even more radical is Sławomir Mentzen of the authoritarian Confederation.
While there are also left-wing candidates — polling in single digits and not expected to reach the second round — the race has already become a dispute within the Polish right. Certainly, the president’s formal powers are limited in Poland’s parliamentary system, and yet their veto powers and symbolic role remain significant. For the ruling coalition, led by former European Council president Tusk, controlling the presidency is essential to ensure smooth legislative work.
The Left, then, will likely have little impact on the outcome. Yet even for its forces, the vote is truly existential.
Since the October 2023 general election, in which Tusk’s neoliberal coalition (also backed by parts of the center left) took power from PiS, many on the international left saw potential for some kind of progressive shift. When I visited comrades from the Spanish left-wing press shortly after the vote, even they were hopeful. After all, the momentum behind social reforms was real, and liberal forces had built their campaign partly on opposition to PiS’s near-total abortion ban — a crucial issue for the working-class electorate.
I wrote for Jacobin ahead of those elections, speaking of the economic fallout of the war in Ukraine and its effect on the vote. Since then,…
Auteur: Krzysztof Katkowski
