Opposition Wins Polish Election

Poles End Turbulent Kaczynski Era

By Jan Puhl

The Polish twins have been separated. Voters on Sunday torpedoed Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski's attempt to get re-elected. But it's far from clear whether challenger Donald Tusk, 50, who has pledged to mend relations with EU allies, will be able to implement his policy agenda.

Polish opposition leader Donald Tusk, 50, who heads the center-right Civic Platform party, won Sunday's general election in Poland with the best result of any party since communism, putting an end to two turbulent years of rule by the Kaczynski twins.

Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski has conceded defeat in the election that saw the biggest turnout since the fall of communism. His brother Lech, the president, does not face an election until 2010, but opposition parties together looked set to get enough seats to trump his power to veto legislation.

Election day began with a debacle. In polling station No. 45 in Plock, north of Warsaw, the lock on the safe containing ballot papers was jammed. That meant that the start of the election was delayed by 20 minutes, leading Poland's electoral commission to order all polling stations to stay open 20 minutes longer.

In the end the election ended a full two hours late because the polling stations in Warsaw and Gdansk had to be kept open longer due to a shortage of ballot papers, with local police having to rush deliver fresh ones. No one had expected so many voters to head to the polling stations.

Poland's long night ended with a triumph -- for democracy and for the opposition: The turnout was over 55 percent, the highest level since 1991, when the Poles held their first free election since World War II. Two years ago, only 40 percent exercised their right to vote. After two raucous years of rule by the Kaczynski twins, the Poles clearly wanted a change of direction.

Incumbent Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski and his national conservative Law and Justice party (PiS) got just under 31 percent of the vote. Tusk's Civic Platform won just under 45 percent. The Left and Democrats, an alliance of former communists and old dissidents, got 12 percent. Aside from them, only the moderate Polish Peasant Party got over the five percent hurdle needed to win seats in parliament.

Populist Parties Voted Out

The populist Self Defence party of Andrzej Lepper and the nationalist Catholic League of Polish Families didn't clear that hurdle and won't have seats in the new parliament. Getting those two small chaotic parties voted out was probably the greatest service Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski did his country.

Lepper had spent years unsettling the political establishment with left-wing nationalist rhetoric and wild accusations. The League had agitated against homosexuals and didn't shy away from anti-Semitic comments.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski had picked these two small parties as coalition partners to realize his dream of a "Fourth Republic" that would put an end to the graft of the post-Communist era. Lepper made himself untenable with sex affairs.

Kaczynski relied on his established voter base, but his opponents were far more successful at mobilizing fresh support on Sunday. By midday, expatriate voters were queuing up outside the Polish embassy in London to cast their ballots. The line was several hundred meters long. About a million Poles have moved to Britain in search of higher-paid work since Poland joined the European Union in 2004.

Change of Direction

This election wasn't about concrete policies. The campaign was a very brief one -- the Polish parliament had only dissolved itself six weeks ago and called the election two years early after Kaczynski's last coalition collapsed amid acrimony over a corruption investigation.

He had put the fight against post-communist graft at the heart of his campaign and there had been little debate about concrete policies. Sunday was about a fundamental change in direction.

Since his election triumph two years ago Jaroslaw Kaczynski has waged a tough battle against communist old boys networks within the government apparatus and the economy, had attacked real and imagined communist-era informants, adopted a combative tone in dealings with Germany and positioned his country as a notorious troublemaker in EU affairs.

He wasn't without backing in the population -- many Poles, especially young people living in cities, regarded the endemic corruption as an obstacle to getting ahead. And many Poles, by all means not just nationalist ones, often felt sidelined by Germany and under-represented in the EU.

For a long time the opposition was weak and divided. Donald Tusk, an intellectual, appeared cultured and refined but somehow too soft. He only managed to swing public sentiment in his favor at the last minute. He won a television debate against Kaczynski two weeks ago when he accused the prime minister of domestic policy mistakes, boorish behavior on the international stage and obsessive friend-or-foe thinking -- and still remained matter-of-fact and refined.

Tusk represents an approach many Poles have been yearning for. Months ago sociologists such as Warsaw Professor Andrzej Rychard warned: "The Poles are in a constant state of emergency; they're sick of the Kaczynski's' fierce polarisation." Jaroslaw Kaczynski seems to have gone too far when he tried to turn the election around last week by conjuring up a corruption scandal supposedly engulfing the entire liberal opposition. Even supportive commentators turned against him.

Will Poland, whose economy continues to deliver impressive growth, now transform itself overnight from an EU rabble-rouser into a paragon of virtue? It's too soon to be overly optimistic in this respect.

Tough Battles Ahead

Governing won't be easy for Tusk, a foot soldier in the anti-communist Solidarity movement in the 1980s. And relations with Germany won't become problem-free overnight. Even Civic Platform politicians are strongly opposed to German plans to build a Center Against Expulsions in Berlin -- a project launched by associations that represent Germans expelled from parts of what is now Poland and the Czech Republic after World War II.

And the Civic Platform has also criticized the Baltic Sea gas pipeline running from Russia to Germany promoted by former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. The tone of foreign relations is likely to improve, however. Tusk's non-combative approach and pro-European views have won him support from millions of young Poles.

Luckily Jaroslaw Kaczynski didn't succeed in doing fundamental damage to German-Polish relations. The fierce rhetoric from Warsaw didn't deter Western investors or tourists. In future, relations will be characterized by diplomacy rather than fierce nationalist rhetoric.

Domestic politics will be tougher for Tusk, though. He will probably have to form a coalition with the Peasant Party that will prove an obstacle to his liberal economic reforms. A quarter of Poles are still employed in farming and are opposed to Tusks' plans for a flat-rate, one-size-fits-all tax.

And Jaroslaw Kaczynski won't just give up politics and move back in with his mother, with whom he lived until recently. He will continue to try to pull strings in the background and has a powerful ally in brother Lech, Poland's president. The head of state can veto legislation. To overcome that veto Tusk will need to get three fifths of parliament behind him for every law -- that's 277 votes.

According to projections on Sunday night, he lacks 20 to 30 seats, which he will have to find by making political deals.