Today are elections in Poland, to be more exactly the second round of the presidential race. The two candidates are Rafał Trzaskowski, the current Mayor of Warsaw, and Andrzej Duda, the incumbent president. Trzaskowski is supported by the biggest Opposition party the PO (Platforma Obywatelska – Civic Platform). Duda is supported by the PiS (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość – Law and Justice), the party who is currently in power. The difference between the candidates and their points of view are enormous. Trzaskowski shares liberal values and has a pro-European mindset. In the contrary there is Duda who is a hardline conservative and shares a more nationalist mindset. The polls show a dead end, so it will be exciting until the last vote is counted.
As someone who has limited knowledge of polish it is quite hard to keep UpToDate with the news of this election, but thanks to Google Translate I could follow it a little bit. I tried to inform myself with different sources but wasn’t that easy. Twitter was quite useful because it provides for every tweet a direct translation.
For me as a foreigner who lives in Poland it is interesting to follow the campaign and make a comparison with elections in Austria. In the media I read that Poland is divided between rural areas and urban areas. In 2016 we had similar circumstances for the presidential elections. A far-right candidate from the FPÖ (Freedom Party Austria) versus the candidate from the Green Party. In the first round the right-wing candidate won and the polls for the second round were to close to predict a winner. The green candidate Alexander van der Bellen won the second round with 50.35 % of the valid votes. This was just 31.000 votes more than Hofer had the candidate from the right-wing party, considering that 6.3 million voters were registered it was extremly close. Due to some mistakes during the counting, the election had to be repeated but in the end the result was the same. In this period, I felt how divided Austria was, it wasn’t only about the election. It was an election about the future of Austria, should we continue on the European way or moving to a diffrent path. A country which is open and accept different ways of living. Or being more nationalistic and believe in our “tradtional” values. In the end Austria choose the first option, I hope same applies for Poland.
The topics during this campaign wasn’t like I expected somehow connected to the Corona Situation and their impact on the economy. It was centered around social aspects, and how the society should be. One topic which was so important for Duda was the LGTBQ+ Community, but off course in a bad way. The hate, which was shown against this community shocked me, this is not how a president should be speak. Comparing it to the communism was just one method used. He also compared his opponent with the virus. He is not interested in unifying the country, there is this idea of “us” against “them”. It is a strategy which can be used always, for example in the elections of 2015 the main “villain” in the election were refugees because back then it was the topic of the hour. Creating a fear is method which is used by right wing parties all over the world.
Another point which surprised me is how well the propaganda is developed in Poland. Before I followed the election, I never thought it could be that worse, but I learned fast that TVP (Telewizja Polska, the biggest state media) is in realty more TVPiS. To be neutral or even objective is impossible for them. I was shocked when I saw a news report about Duda with English subtitles. It was an ad for him, but for sure not a report. It didn’t had any journalistic value. Before the second round there should be another debate but, Trzaskowski didn’t want it to be only made by TVP, there should be other networks included as well. In the end there were two debate at the same time with only one candidate. Duda was only interviewed by TVP, Trzaskowski was answering the questions from several networks. It looked surreal, for me.
Like I said already it will be pathbreaking election, will be there another 5 years of a PiS President, which makes it easy to govern for the current Prime minister or will be there Trzaskowski who will have a close look on the government and could prevent action like the judicial reform. It also determines the place of Poland in the European Union, will it be more integrative or stay on the nationalist path with countries like Hungary.
Poland is in the heard of Europe, considering it form a geographical point of view. It should also find this place on a political point of view.