What’s happening there? Tusk’s Centrist coalition has just won the election but I was challenged as to what I could do to help fight the far-right in Europe and given where I live and that the largest European ethnic minority in the UK is Polish, I thought I’d have a look at what’s happening there.
My interest this time was sparked by comrades that argued to support Lewica Razem in Poland. Left Together, aka Lewica Razem, their wikipedia page, were affiliated to DiEM25. I found an interview, dated Jan 2023 with their then international officer, Zophia Malisz. It seems however that Razem have broken with Diem25 over the war in Ukraine. Razem are part of Tusk’s parliamentary majority but are not part of the Government. They are it seems trying to find or make alliances with sister parties in central and eastern Europe.
I attended a seminar which spoke about the politics of Poland in the Sjem and coming elections for the EP. This led me to find these links,
- Poland’s opposition parties reach coalition agreement from politico.eu
- How is Poland’s new ruling coalition governing? which is more critical, see below, from a site called “Notes from Poland“.
An essay, by Prof Aleks Szczerbiak on the Polish Left and the 2023 elections,
One interesting point that is made is that the right wing Law and Justice Party have a strong committent to welfare and the social wage and are thus attractive to social conservative/economic liberal voters. Just as well that the UK Tories have rejected this with the defenestration of Johnson although UKIP were struggling to articulate this as an offer, but they are owned and funded by plutocrats who don’t want to pay their taxes.
In Jan 24, I was pointed at these articles, about the difficulty of rolling back the authoritarian reforms of the PiS government.
- „Reparaturarbeiten sind schwierig“569/ or in English, Repair work is difficult. A commentary by Ewa Łętowska, a constitutional scholar from Germany. Rolling back an autocratic kleptocratic regime is hard, even if you want to.
- Poland’s unconstructive talks from the Economist
- Poland is trying to restore the rule of law without violating it from the Economist
- Donald Tusk tries to restore Poland’s rule of law , from the Economist, subtitled what happens when the populists lose.
I add four more references mainly on the difficulty of undoing the populist, autocratic reforms; some of them hint at the work that will need to be done in the UK.