Against all odds: Poland’s election and the way forward

In what ended up being the highest turnout vote since the fall of communism in 1989, Sunday’s election in Poland delivered a landmark result.

After eight years in power, the ruling right-wing populist Law and Justice (PiS) party emerged as the largest electoral force but seemingly lacks any viable path to muster a parliamentary majority.

Instead, and against all odds, Poles have handed a route to power to a coalition of opposition parties — Civic Coalition (30.4%), Third Way (14.42%), and New Left (8.55%) —which secured enough votes to claim victory together.

This is a hugely important result that will likely pave the way for Poland’s re-alignment with EU standards, and a return to a path of democratic revival.

The campaign that preceded Sunday’s vote was as divisive and decisive as the election was considered to be. And it was the contest’s particularly vicious nature that exposed how high the stakes were.

Though a key player in the fight for Ukrainian democracy, Polish democracy has been slowly eroding from within.

Since coming to power in 2015, PiS has been widely accused of systematically dismantling core democratic tenets, including politicizing the judiciary, undermining the separation of powers, and actively increasing government influence over media.

For most in the opposition, then, the election was viewed as perhaps the last chance to stop this illiberal path through democratic means.

Instead, for PiS, the election was a matter of survival. In a tight race with no guarantee of a win, the ruling party pulled all levers to secure a victory, combining assertive campaign tactics with all the structural advantages it had amassed over the years.

Sensing its popularity ebbing, PiS exploited its extensive control of public media to smear the opposition. PiS relentlessly painted Civic Coalition leader Donald Tusk as a stooge of Berlin and a Russian conspirator.

A controversial commission to investigate Russian interference that would bar those found guilty from politics was criticised as a mechanism to hinder Tusk’s campaign.

PiS also amplified hostile rhetoric against groups that “threaten” Polish identity, like the LGBT community or migrants, to stoke fear and tilt public opinion in its favour.

Despite being one of Ukraine’s biggest supporters since the Russian invasion, PiS leaders declared that Poland would stop sending weapons to Ukraine and compared Kyiv to a “drowning person” clinging to its rescuer.

These statements were largely viewed as a political gambit to capitalize on the anti-Ukrainian electorate.

And in a move similar to Hungary, two months before the election PiS announced that the October ballot would include a loaded four-question referendum, in a clear attempt to energise populist and nationalist sentiment within the electorate and raise additional election campaign funds.

Pol-and now?

In the end, this was not enough. Electoral math now means that the ruling party’s chance to remain at the helm of the country is essentially diminished. And while turnout for the election was historically high, preliminary data suggests that not even the referendum idea handed PiS an advantage, as not enough people voted for it to be valid.

For the new centre-liberal government that is likely to be formed, the result came against all odds — not least given the ‘clear advantage’ that the ruling party enjoyed, as a preliminary monitoring report from the Organisation for Cooperation and Security in Europe found.

But as important as this result is, the road ahead will be bumpy.

While signalling a return to democratic values, a new government will find that undoing the damages to core democratic tenets and the rule of law made by PiS over its last terms will be thorny and time-consuming. While some policy changes can be done through ministry edits, others will face challenges from PiS-controlled institutions.

A new governing coalition could conceivably also have to wage legislative battles with PiS-aligned President Andrzej Duda, who can exercise his veto rights until the end of his mandate in 2025.

It is also important to remember that Poland remains a deeply divided country. Poles voted in droves to oust the ruling camp, but the likely future coalition will have to overcome deep distrust across constituencies where PiS retains strong support, especially in rural and provincial areas.

Against this backdrop, it will also be closely scrutinised in terms of delivering not only on its democratic vision but also on its domestic agenda. And here too, complications may arise, owing to unforeseen international shifts, but also the most expectable of domestic governing obstacles, intra-coalition differences.

Third Way, for instance, differs from the two others in the alliance in their stance on abortion and other social issues — if not properly managed, differences of this kind can lead to governmental stagnation.

On the international stage, the opposition’s victory would almost certainly mean a concerted effort to restore relations with the EU and key member states.

A new government, likely under EU connoisseur Tusk, can be expected to pursue a markedly more constructive approach at the European level and work to resolve the protracted rule-of-law feuding that has dominated Warsaw’s relations with Brussels under PiS.

At the top of the agenda will be judiciary reforms to unlock EU funds—as long as they are not halted PiS conduits—but considering Poland’s geopolitical importance, we can also expect positive deliberation on many other hot political and policy fronts, including Ukraine, enlargement, and migration.

Seeking to smooth over ties with Germany and explore closer cooperation with Paris and Berlin through the so-called Weimar Triangle format are also likely priorities.

A remarkable political turnaround, the Polish election outcome then has the potential to decidedly reaffirm the country’s liberal democratic values and redefine its relationship with its European allies.

After years of an illiberal drift, a long and winding road now awaits the new government that will likely be formed.

But at this critical moment, Sunday’s election does offer vital hope that democracy can win against all odds — and this will have significant implications for Poland itself, the rest of Europe, and beyond.

Vassilis Ntousas is the head of European Operations and Krystyna Sikora is a research assistant at the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

This originally was published by EURACTIV on October 21, 2023.