Poland's nationalists on course to stay in power for second term

[webfact]

Poland's nationalists on course to stay in power for second term

By Pawel Florkiewicz and Anna Koper

 

Poland's ruling party Law and Justice (PiS) leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski waves after the exit poll results are announced in Warsaw, Poland, October 13, 2019. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel

 

WARSAW, Poland (Reuters) - Poland's nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) was on course to keep its ruling majority after a general election on Sunday, an exit poll showed, a victory likely to stoke concern about democratic standards in the largest former Soviet European Union state.

 

A second term for PiS will also bolster anti-immigration populists in the European Union are who keen to scale back the bloc's liberal agenda and who cheer Poland's chafing against Brussels over the rule of law.

 

The poll by Ipsos gave PiS 43.6% of the vote, with 27.4% of the ballots going to the centrist Civic Coalition, an umbrella group that includes the Civic Platform formerly led by European Union Council President Donald Tusk. A leftist bloc garnered 11.9% of votes in the poll.

 

"We have victory," PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, 70, told party members at the party's headquarters in central Warsaw, but he added the party had "deserved to win more".

 

Election officials are expected to start announcing partial results on Monday.

 

Opposition groups and Poland's EU partners have said that during its four years in power PiS has undermined the independence of the judiciary, forced public media to promote its agenda and taken other steps to quell dissent.

 

It has shifted Poland's foreign policy away from the European mainstream, becoming a leading proponent of calls to take some powers away from Brussels.

 

Throughout the campaign, PiS told voters that business and cultural elites in Poland should be replaced with people who espouse patriotic values, to ensure fair market competition and access to state institutions such as courts.

 

It has given few details about future policy plans, but Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro told reporters after voting ended on Sunday that PiS "had a real plan ... for courts to stop being the ball and chain of the Polish economy."

 

The party has cast the election as a choice between a society rooted in traditional Catholic values and a liberal order that promotes a chosen few and undermines family life.

 

Critics accused it of fomenting homophobia during the election campaign, with PiS officials calling lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights an invasive foreign influence that threatens Poland's national identity.

 

Under Poland's complex election rules, the PiS result from Sunday's exit poll would translate into 239 seats in the 460-member lower house of parliament, calculations by private broadcaster TVN showed. PiS has 240 seats in the outgoing legislature.

 

DIVIDED SOCIETY

PiS has drawn support from poorer Poles who feel they have missed out on prosperity since the collapse of communism in 1989. The party has mixed nationalist rhetoric with a vast welfare programme financed by an economic boom.

 

To build up support, it has depended on close links with Poland's dominant Catholic Church, with senior officials frequently attending religious ceremonies and events, and the party has espoused stronger religious values in public life.

 

"I see that they are building something, that they are doing something, that they have bought something back, it was all devastated, everything was sold, Poland had nothing, and I support PiS for that," said Teresa Sass, an 85-year-old pensioner in the northern city of Gdansk.

 

According to Ipsos, voter turnout surged to 61.1%, which, if confirmed, would be the highest in a parliamentary vote since a 1989 partially free election that ushered in the end of communist rule in Poland.

 

The rise follows mounting political polarisation in Poland, with many PiS opponents anxious about the future of democracy in the country once seen as an exemplar of democratic transition.

 

"When I talk with my mother, I practice the art of avoidance, I don't get into any ideological discussions with her," said Krzysztof Michalec, 56, as he waited in the sunshine to see Kaczynski cast his vote in Warsaw.

 

A former opposition activist during communism, Michalec voted for the Civic Platform.

 

The election will see the return of left-wing parties into parliament after they lost their seats four years ago because of fragmentation.

 

The Spring party of Robert Biedron, 43, Poland's first openly gay lawmaker, and Together of Adrian Zandberg campaigned as part of a bloc on a promise to end coal mining and sever the links between church and state.

 

"We did it, we enter parliament as a third-largest political force," Zandberg, 39, was quoted as saying by the state PAP news agency.

 

(Reporting by Anna Pruchnicka in Gdansk, Wojciech Zurawski in Krakow and the Warsaw bureau; Writing by Justyna Pawlak; Editing by Edmund Blair, Peter Cooney and Will Dunham)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2019-10-14

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[4737 Carlin]

2 hours ago, webfact said:

a victory likely to stoke concern about democratic standards in the largest former Soviet European Union state.

There only seems to be these concerns when a people vote against the globalist agenda. Only in upside-down clown world (ie. the West) is the word "populism" used as a derogatory term. 

[blny]

Stupid article, this is a conservative non-nationalist party. Although for the left, all those who are not left are fascists and nationalists ????

[Jingthing]

They are using gay people as scapegoats. That's pretty darned fascist in the context of a majority Christian nation.

 

I suppose they would have targeted Jews instead of they had many Jews but they took care of that by collaborating with the Nazis which of course they deny now.

 

But such nationalist parties still have Soros to kick around which is modern code.

 

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[Baerboxer]

4 hours ago, 4737 Carlin said:

There only seems to be these concerns when a people vote against the globalist agenda. Only in upside-down clown world (ie. the West) is the word "populism" used as a derogatory term. 

 

Ah but in the globalist liberal minds, only they are allowed to be called democratic and only there ideas can be democratic.

 

What the people actually want is immaterial - they know what's best!

[blny]

9 hours ago, Jingthing said:

 

I suppose they would have targeted Jews instead of they had many Jews but they took care of that by collaborating with the Nazis which of course they deny now.

Poland was the first country to fight the Germans, we never collaborated with them like in many Western and Northern European countries, where local authorities caught Jews for Germans.
In Poland, when you helped a Jew, you and your whole family would die.
Jingthing where are you from? tell me what did your country do during World War II? Did your country collaborate? formed volunteer units to fight alongside the Germans?
So don't write nonsense about Poland if your historical knowledge is zero.

[Crazy Alex]

9 hours ago, Jingthing said:

They are using gay people as scapegoats. That's pretty darned fascist in the context of a majority Christian nation.

 

I suppose they would have targeted Jews instead of they had many Jews but they took care of that by collaborating with the Nazis which of course they deny now.

 

But such nationalist parties still have Soros to kick around which is modern code.

 

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What's wrong with being a nationalist?

[Crazy Alex]

7 minutes ago, blny said:

Poland was the first country to fight the Germans, we never collaborated with them like in many Western and Northern European countries, where local authorities caught Jews for Germans.
In Poland, when you helped a Jew, you and your whole family would die.
Jingthing where are you from? tell me what did your country do during World War II? Did your country collaborate? formed volunteer units to fight alongside the Germans?
So don't write nonsense about Poland if your historical knowledge is zero.

Awesome post! My knowledge of history regarding Poland likely pales in comparison to you yours, but I've read a bit about Lech Walesa. Some say he was more responsible for the fall of communism than Reagan. I'm not really here to debate that. What I am here to say is that Poland clearly remembers what it was like to struggle away from communism under the thumb of the USSR and still remembers how horrible it was.

[bristolboy]

1 minute ago, Crazy Alex said:

Awesome post! My knowledge of history regarding Poland likely pales in comparison to you yours, but I've read a bit about Lech Walesa. Some say he was more responsible for the fall of communism than Reagan. I'm not really here to debate that. What I am here to say is that Poland clearly remembers what it was like to struggle away from communism under the thumb of the USSR and still remembers how horrible it was.

Actually the current Polish governing party has won favor not so much because of its nationalism but because of it's socialism. It gives, by Polish standards, huge subsidies for families. It's what right-wingers would call a "welfare state."

[Crazy Alex]

Just now, bristolboy said:

Actually the current Polish governing party has won favor not so much because of its nationalism but because of it's socialism. It gives, by Polish standards, huge subsidies for families. It's what right-wingers would call a "welfare state."

That's disappointing to hear. Maybe they are forgetting. Oh well, their country, their business. Thanks for the info.

[bristolboy]

7 minutes ago, Crazy Alex said:

That's disappointing to hear. Maybe they are forgetting. Oh well, their country, their business. Thanks for the info.

Actually the Polish economy is growing at a fast pace. It's not in the Eurozone which gives it a big advantage.

[Crazy Alex]

4 minutes ago, bristolboy said:

Actually the Polish economy is growing at a fast pace. It's not in the Eurozone which gives it a big advantage.

Cool. Glad they stayed away from that disaster.

[Jingthing]

Poland was the first country to fight the Germans, we never collaborated with them like in many Western and Northern European countries, where local authorities caught Jews for Germans.

In Poland, when you helped a Jew, you and your whole family would die.

Jingthing where are you from? tell me what did your country do during World War II? Did your country collaborate? formed volunteer units to fight alongside the Germans?

So don't write nonsense about Poland if your historical knowledge is zero.

Don't bother personally baiting me. It will be ignored.

 

As far as how the Poles treated Jews in WW2 its a complex history.

 

There were some heroes and there were many more collaborators and villains.

 

There were Poles that hunted down Jews and burned them alive that would have warmed the cockles of an SS officers heart. That's another thing about this white nationalist movement in Poland. They actively deny the collaboration of Poles with the Nazis with exterminating the Jews. Sorry that denialist garbage might work in Poland. The greater world knows better.

 

 

"The Truth About Poland's Role in the Holocaust

 

A new law endangers an honest reckoning with a complex past."

 

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/02/poland-holocaust-death-camps/552455/

 

 

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[Jingthing]

What's wrong with being a nationalist?

Study history.

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[Jingthing]

Awesome post! My knowledge of history regarding Poland likely pales in comparison to you yours, but I've read a bit about Lech Walesa. Some say he was more responsible for the fall of communism than Reagan. I'm not really here to debate that. What I am here to say is that Poland clearly remembers what it was like to struggle away from communism under the thumb of the USSR and still remembers how horrible it was.

Huh?

His post wasn't about communism.

It was a denialist post about WW2.

 

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[toast1]

Far right, nationalist, white nationalist, white supremacist, fascist, Zionist, extremist etc.

Do these words mean anything anymore? Practically anyone not on the Left who expresses some pride in their nation and desire to preserve their culture is likely to be called on of these names.

 

 

There would be no free Poland without Reagan, Thatcher and Pope John II. History has largely been rewritten, Soviet style, to airbrush these out of events which they created. It is sad to see how easily and quickly a PC version of history has been created.

 

No Lech Walesa could not have achieved anything without the courage of these three, who stood by him and gave the Polish people support to rise up against Socialism.