
It is hard
for any party to claim victory in an election where over 76% of the electorate
either did not vote or spoilt their ballot paper. Although the EU has one of the highest
approval ratings in Poland, turnouts in elections are generally low. For almost
a decade now the country’s political scene has been dominated by two parties of
the conservative right (Citizens’ Platform – PO and Law and Justice Party –
PiS). An artificial divide around historical and cultural issues between these
parties has formed, with each reliant on the other to mobilise their core
electorates. This has helped to enhance political apathy and the sense that
there is no alternative to the status quo.
Both of these
two right-wing parties ended up virtually neck and neck in the elections, with
the ruling PO scoring 32.13% of the vote, narrowly above PiS who gained 31.78%.
Compared to the 2009 elections this is a swing to PiS
of around 16%. This represents a relative success for PiS and points towards
the possibility that it could emerge as the largest party in next year’s
parliamentary elections. However, the PiS electorate is traditionally more
disciplined in voting than PO voters, which inflates its support when there is
such a low turnout.
These elections confirmed that there
is currently only one serious electoral party on the Polish left: the
Democratic Left Alliance (SLD). The SLD won 9.55% of the vote, above its rival
Europe Plus-Your Movement (EP-TR) that scored just 3.58%. EP-TR was an alliance
between sections of social democracy with the liberal centre, bringing together
the ex-President Aleksander Kwaśniewski and the liberal populist Janusz
Palikot. This most probably signals the end of Palikot’s attempt to build a new
centre-left party, failing to capitalise on his huge success at the last
parliamentary elections when his movement won more votes than the SLD. EP-TR is the latest failed attempt to build a
political current that combines liberal economic with left-wing social cultural
policies.
The SLD leadership, around former PM
Leszek Miller, has attempted to present the SLD’s result as a success for the
party. However, the party won over 300,000 less votes than it had done in the
2009 elections. This confirms how the party has been unable to extend beyond
its, naturally diminishing, core electorate and build a serious alternative
party to PO and PiS.
Poland is one of the few countries in
Europe where there were no candidates connected to the European left slate: GUE/NGL. The only left alternative to the SLD and EP-TR was
presented by the Greens. Although they put forward candidates in a number of
constituencies and ran an energetic campaign on limited resources, they failed
to make any notable breakthrough.
The political party that managed to
break onto the political scene was the extreme conservative-liberal party: New
Right (NP). NP is led by the maverick Janusz Korwin-Mikke, who has been on the
margins of the political scene since the early 1990s. NP combine extreme
neo-liberalism, with strong conservative policies on social and cultural
issues. As examples, they support the total abolition of state education and in
the past Korwin-Mikke has claimed that 'women only
pretend to resist rape'. They are likely to sit with the far-right in the European
Parliament, alongside parties such as the French National Front. Although NP’s
vote represents a minority of society it indicates a worrying trend in Polish
politics, whereby the ideology of liberal individualism is being combined with
strong social conservatism. NP won the largest percentage of the vote amongst
young people and have replaced Palikot’s party as the new representative of the
frustrated young entrepreneur.
The dominance of PO and PiS in Polish politics will continue
at least until next year’s general elections. PO will try to mobilise its
electorate by repeating its long-used strategy of raising fears about PiS
returning to power. In turn PiS will try to mobilise its base in the hope that
it can usurp PO as the largest party and form a new government. The rise of NP
means that PiS potentially has a new ally on the right that it could enter
government with. It is also likely that the SLD will remain as Poland’s sole
major party of the left before these elections and hope that by gaining its
standard 10% it could possibly enter government with PO.
The fact that over ¾ of the electorate did not participate in
these elections shows how the vast majority of society feels no connection to
any of the political parties. More urgently than ever there is a need for a new
progressive left alternative in Poland. This needs to be based not on competing
with the right for the votes of the ‘liberal centre’ but seeking to win the
support of the vast majority of society who presently have no political
representative.
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