Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk knew it would be a challenge to extricate the outgoing nationalist government from power after he orchestrated a shock election victory three months ago.
"Did
anyone really think that the job ahead of us would be light, easy and
pleasant?” he said on social media platform X on Jan. 5. “No, it will be heavy,
difficult and unpleasant for some time.”
But just
how tough is being laid bare in a political drama in Warsaw that has echoes of
the aftermath of Donald Trump losing the US presidential election. It’s shaping
up to be the biggest test of Polish democracy since the end of communism almost
35 years ago.
Between
the president protecting two fugitive members of parliament, a central bank
chief avoiding a probe into his policymaking and tens of thousands of people on
the freezing streets of Warsaw, it’s been an eventful week in Poland.
Tusk’s
return to power was supposed to end a feud with the European Union over rule of
law and unlock €60 billion ($66 billion) of frozen funds after his new
government vowed to take Poland back into the mainstream. His election pledge
was to reverse the country’s course within 24 hours.
Rebuilding
democratic institutions was never going to be straight-forward, though, after
eight years of rule by the Law & Justice Party, which stacked public media,
the courts and state-owned companies with its people.
Rather
than go quietly, the party under Jaroslaw Kaczynski, its leader and Tusk’s
nemesis, has fired up supporters. Addressing crowds on Thursday in front of the
Polish Parliament, Kaczynski said the incoming administration was trying to
destroy Poland and subjugate it to Germany.
“This is
going to be the pattern now,” said Anna Materska-Sosnowska, a political
scientist at the University of Warsaw. “So, I don’t see the situation calming
down at all. I think we are likely to have a very turbulent period coming up.”
Poland’s
speaker of parliament has warned the country is in a deepening constitutional
crisis. He said opposition lawmakers have told him they may set up their own
assembly or at least disrupt the legislature. Among other things, Tusk’s
government needs to approve its budget by the end of the month.
Tusk
said on Friday evening he wants to unite the country divided by the years of
aggressive political conflict. “For me, rebuilding institutions and their
independence is absolutely critical — it’s a starting point for the Polish
state to become acceptable to everyone again,” he said on television, adding
the process may take years. “People need to feel that it’s for all, not for the
selected few.”
Demonstrators
aren’t about to storm the building like three years ago in Washington, yet
there are similarities with Trump supporters and the advent of the Joe Biden
administration because of the divisions within Polish society.
Law
& Justice came to power in 2015, vowing to be the defenders of “true Poles”
against the liberal elites in Warsaw and Brussels.
Everything
from abortion and LGBTQ rights to immigration and relations with Germany were
weaponized with the populist, us-against-them narrative backed by state media,
the Catholic Church and, on most occasions, President Andrzej Duda, a party
loyalist.
“What
has happened is something that many of us thought was impossible, which is for
Polish politics to get even more polarized,” said Aleks Szczerbiak, a professor
of politics at the University of Sussex in the UK. “The government has moved
very quickly with radical measures. The result has been to raise the
temperature very high.”
Investors
have taken the turmoil in their stride for now, and they have a lot riding on
the transition of Poland back to a core EU ally. The zloty, stocks and bonds
have all rallied since the election on Oct. 15, when Tusk’s opposition bloc won
a majority as more voters turned out since the first free elections in 1989.
Poland’s
currency has gained nearly 9% against the dollar since the ballot, the yield on
benchmark 10-year notes dropped about 75 basis points, while Warsaw’s WIG20
stock index gained 14% — all among the best performers across emerging markets.
Markets have become accustomed to political rows, said Ernest Pytlarczyk, chief
economist at Bank Pekao SA in Warsaw.
That
could change. Tusk, a former Polish premier who left to become European Council
president, was sworn in a month ago and started loosening Law & Justice’s
grip on state institutions. The government started with the national
broadcaster, and immediately ran into trouble. On Dec. 20, some channels went
off air as Law & Justice parliamentarians started sit-ins. Duda then vetoed
a law to fund a new television station.
The same
week, a court sentenced two of the party’s lawmakers to two years in prison for
abuse of power dating back to the late 2000s. That set the scene for the twists
of the past week or so.
A part
of the Supreme Court controlled by Law & Justice-appointed judges revoked a
decision by the speaker of parliament to strip the pair of their mandates to
sit in the legislature. They remained under arrest, though. Enter Duda again.
The president invited them to his palace — replete with a photo op for the
three of them — saying they would stay there until the “evil is conquered.”
Later in
the evening on Jan. 9, police went into the presidential palace and arrested
the lawmakers, only for Duda to announce at a press conference two days later
that he plans to pardon the “political prisoners.” He appealed for
demonstrations to be peaceful.
“Andrzej
Duda is the godfather of the problems we face today,” said Radoslaw Markowski,
professor of political sciences at the SWPS University of Social Sciences and
Humanities in Warsaw. “There will be a fierce fight between the president and
the new government.”
The
battles, though, are on many fronts. As Law & Justice supporters were
preparing to gather in front of parliament on Jan. 11, Poland’s Constitutional
Tribunal barred the government from trying to investigate central bank Governor
Adam Glapinski for political influence on monetary policy. A rate cut in
September ahead of the election blindsided investors and sent the zloty into
freefall.
Tusk on
Friday dismissed the ruling as “non binding” and said there were other legal
ways to probe the governor.
Indeed,
the issue facing Tusk and his government is how to restore rule of law in
Poland and meet EU requirements without breaking the law themselves. The public
wants a return to “normality,” but that’s hard without breaking the law, said
Wladyslaw Teofil Bartoszewski, the deputy foreign minister.
The
escalation of the conflict with Duda is a reminder that accessing EU recovery
funds will be difficult, according to EU diplomats. To get the financing,
Poland needs to meet a set of conditions that include legislative — and the
president is expected to veto them.
The
European Commission, the bloc's executive arm, steered clear of commenting on
what was happening Poland, pointing instead its last rule-of-law report, which
mentioned “serious concerns” related to the independence of the Polish
judiciary.
“There
are only two ways to undo the entire system,” Bartoszewski said. “Either break
the constitution using the same mechanism or change the system meticulously —
piece by piece.”
***With
assistance from Wojciech Moskwa, Ewa Krukowska, Patrick Donahue and Agnieszka
Barteczko.
(Updates
with comment from Tusk in 10th, 11th paragraphs.)
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/poland-political-drama-echoes-trump-152416351.html