Poland: Conservative PiS Party Remains Strongest After Local Elections

Poland held local elections yesterday. Despite the liberal media's predictions, the good guys got more votes than the globalist elitists. This bodes well for the presidential election next year.

From The European Conservative

By Zoltán Kottász

Party leader says country “cannot go down the path that Donald Tusk is pushing it on at the moment.”

Despite liberal media outlets suggesting otherwise, it was not the Europhile party of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Civic Coalition (KO), that won Polish local elections held on Sunday, April 7th, but the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) which, according to exit polls, gained 33.7% of all votes. Centrist-liberal Civic Coalition took 31.9%, with official results set to be announced on Wednesday.

The election was the first test for the government of Tusk—a coalition of KO, centre-right Third Way, and left-wing Lewica—since it came into power in December, ending the eight-year rule of PiS. Although the vote was more relevant on a local level, with voters electing regional parliaments, mayors, and councillors, both government parties and opposition forces were keen to stage a show of strength six months after the October parliamentary elections.

Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of the Law and Justice party, called the victory of PiS an encouraging win, and said “Poland must be a country ruled by Polish patriots,” and “cannot go down the path that Donald Tusk is pushing it on at the moment.” As he noted in his victory speech, the party has won the most votes nationally for the ninth election—presidential, parliamentary, local, and European—in a row, stretching back to 2014.

The political landscape, however, has not changed greatly since the parliamentary elections six months ago: PiS won 35.4% of the votes in October, and KO received 30.7%. Donald Tusk’s coalition allies also produced results similar to those in October, with Third Way getting 13.5% (down from 14.4%), and Lewica 6.8% (down from 8.6%). Meanwhile, right-wing Konfederacja—a potential future ally of PiS—gained 7.5%, slightly higher than its 7.2% in October.

Media in Poland acknowledged that PiS is a force to be reckoned with and has a good chance of winning the European parliamentary elections in June. Conservative Wpolityce wrote that Sunday’s election “is a major success for PiS both politically and psychologically,” pointing out that the strains of being in a multi-party coalition could wear the government down. Liberal Rzeczpospolita believes that while the coalition “still has a mandate to govern,” the overall results show that the ruling majority has a serious competitor.

The fact that the ruling coalition parties together gained more than 50% of all votes, and KO will be the largest group in ten of Poland’s sixteen provinces (PiS in the remaining six), was enough for some mainstream liberal publications to deceptively talk about the election outcome as a victory for Donald Tusk. Bloomberg called the results a “bittersweet win” for the government, while news agency AFP wrote that the “governing pro-European coalition parties came out top in local elections.”

Even Donald Tusk acknowledged that, while KO reclaimed major cities such as  Warsaw, Gdańsk, and Katowice, his party was lagging behind PiS in many parts of the country, especially in rural areas. A second round of voting is due in two weeks in the areas where mayoral candidates failed to win more than 50% of votes.

Since coming to power for his third tenure as prime minister, Donald Tusk has been busy harassing his political opponents: the government has dismissed the top executives of the public service broadcaster, jailed two PiS MPs, raided the home of the former justice minister, replaced the country’s prosecutors, and is set to drag the president of the central bank before a special tribunal. Before being elected, Tusk promised to hold to account anyone who “broke the law” during the eight years of the previous government. Law and Justice sees the actions of the government as pure political revenge. Despite these worrying signs that the law is being misused for political purposes, EU institutions—which regularly lambasted the previous, conservative government for so-called ‘rule of law’ violations—are now not voicing any concerns.