Maciej Stasiński
International Head of the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza
With the results of the elections announced last Sunday, October 15, Poles woke up on Tuesday in a “new country” after “eight years of darkness,” according to the motto of liberal leader Donald Tusk, evidently shared by millions of Poles who attended to vote in unusual numbers. Since the establishment of democracy in 1989, when 63 percent of Poles voted, the 74 percent turnout at the polls recorded on Sunday is the new record.
The three opposition parties – the liberal Civic Platform, the social democratic Left and the centrist Third Way – have resoundingly won the elections, removing the nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS) from power after eight years of a government that had undermined the democracy, placing Poland outside the European Union and dividing the people into enemy tribes. The opposition, which has promised to form a coalition government, will have a comfortable majority in both houses of Parliament.
The opposition has achieved its resounding victory by competing on an unequal footing, in a brutal campaign in which the nationalist regime had used all the resources of the State apparatus, deploying a massive campaign of hate and lies from the public media that had become its platform in which the role of betes noires was awarded to Donald Tusk painted as a “traitor” and “pawn of Germany”, as well as to the European Union and immigrants.
They have been the most important elections since Poland had shaken off communism and begun the democratic transition in 1989.
If then the country embraced parliamentary democracy and recovered national independence by embarking on the path of integration into the EU and NATO, in these last elections it was about recovering this same democracy and the rule of law violated under the authoritarian right-wing regime. as well as returning to the EU, since Law and Justice, in its nationalist drift, intended to lead the country to a “Polexit”.
The future tripartite government will now face the tough mission of reestablishing the independent judiciary, including the annulled Constitutional Court, the plurality of the media, restoring women’s rights, eradicating the plundering of the public treasury and punishing those responsible for numerous violations of the Constitution, abuses of power and a string of scandals, such as an institutionalized sale (under the table in exchange for bribes) of hundreds of thousands of entry visas into the EU to the same immigrants from Asia and Africa, to whom The government denounced it with great fanfare as the main threat to the integrity and well-being of the country.
Reintegration into the EU to restore the practically frozen relations with European allies – and unlock the billions of euros from the recovery fund suspended due to the abuses of the nationalist regime – will be a priority for the new government.
The only unknown is whether the transfer of power will be smooth. Because many key figures in the current regime are clear that the loss of power will not only take away their perks and wealth, but it could also lead them to the dock and jail.
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