• About Us
  • Who Are We
  • Work With Us
Sunday, July 20, 2025
No Result
View All Result
The Globe Post
39 °f
New York
44 ° Fri
46 ° Sat
40 ° Sun
41 ° Mon
No Result
View All Result
The Globe Post
No Result
View All Result
Home Democracy at Risk

US, EU Keep Close Eye as Poland Votes in Key Election

Staff Writer by Staff Writer
06/26/20
in Democracy at Risk, World
Voters check lists at a polling station during the first round of the local elections on October 21, 2018 in the Polish capital Warsaw

Poles go to the polls this Sunday. Photo: Janek Skarzynski, AFP

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

The future of Poland’s right-wing government hangs in the balance as Poles prepare to vote on Sunday in a tight election that had to be delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Ahead of the vote, President Andrzej Duda this week visited Washington where he received words of encouragement from US President Donald Trump who said he was doing a “terrific job.”

Trump sees Duda, backed by the governing Law and Justice (PiS) party, as an important European ally, and Duda’s visit to the White House was the first by a foreign leader since the pandemic began.

But Poland’s EU partners have pilloried the government’s reforms, particularly of the judicial system, saying they are eroding democracy just three decades after Poland shed communism.

The latest opinion polls indicate that Duda will easily come first on Sunday but fall short of the 50 percent majority required to win outright.

He would then face a run-off in the second round on July 12 against liberal rival Rafal Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw, that is too close to call.

Anti-Gay Rhetoric

Duda has promised to defend the governing party’s raft of popular social benefits, including a child allowance and extra pension payments — a key factor behind the populists winning a second term in October’s parliamentary election.

He has also echoed the party’s attacks on LGBT+ rights and Western values, something critics argue is a pivot away from corruption allegations against senior PiS officials in their handling of the COVID-19 crisis.

Duda’s anti-gay attacks have triggered a wave of protests.

Poland’s President Andrzej Duda gives a press conference on February 6, 2018 in Warsaw
Poland’s President Andrzej Duda. Photo: Janek Skarzynski, AFP

Campaigning on the slogan “Enough is Enough” Duda’s main rival, liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, has vowed to defend the PiS’s popular welfare payments.

But the former European affairs minister from the opposition centrist Civic Platform, also promises to “fight hard” for a fair slice of the EU’s 2021-27 budget and to repair tattered ties with Brussels.

‘Budapest Model’?

Since winning power in 2015, both Duda and the PiS have upended Polish politics by stoking tensions with the EU and wielding influence through state-owned companies and public broadcasters.

Some analysts view the election as a crucial juncture: a second five-year term for Duda would allow the PiS to make even more controversial changes while defeat could unravel the party’s power.

“It’s more than creeping authoritarianism and drifting away from liberal democracy,” according to Warsaw University political scientist Anna Materska-Sosowska. “It’s also about… a drift to the Budapest model (of Hungary’s Viktor Orban). That’s the danger,” she told AFP.

‘One of Us’

Bread and butter issues are weighing heavily on voters’ minds as the economic fallout of the pandemic is set to send Poland into its first recession since communism’s demise.

But there is little doubt who will win in the sleepy, relatively poor, eastern Polish village of Godziszow, population 2,200.

Nearly 90 percent of voters there backed the PiS in October’s election — its best result nationwide.

“I’d give the PiS an ‘A’ for its social spending,” Magda Ciupak, 33, an English teacher, local councilor and mother of two. “As a conservative, it’s also important to me that President Duda is a proud Catholic — he’s folksy, one of us,” said Ciupak, who also runs a farm with her husband.

Weak Opposition

Anna Konieczna, a small business owner in the wealthy western Polish city of Poznan, will choose differently.

Konieczna said it was “scandalous” that tax revenue generated by small businesses was “being spent lightly” by the government on benefits.

Condemning Duda’s attacks on the LGBT+ community and his backing of contested PiS judicial reforms as “completely unacceptable”, Konieczna said she backs Trzaskowski, but not wholeheartedly. “His party (Civic Platform) is so weak, it has failed miserably to provide a viable alternative to the current government,” she said.

Originally scheduled for May, the election was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has seen over 33,000 infections and more than 1,400 deaths in Poland, a country of 38 million people.

A new hybrid system of postal and conventional voting will be used to stem infections. Polling stations will be open between 7:00 am and 9:00 pm (0500-1900 GMT) with an exit poll expected as soon as voting ends.

ShareTweet
Staff Writer

Staff Writer

AFP with The Globe Post

Related Posts

Donald Trump
Opinion

Fact vs. Fiction: The Trump Administration’s Dubious War on Reverse Discrimination

by Kevin Cokley
June 18, 2025
A Black Lives Matter mural in New York City.
Opinion

Fuhgeddaboudit! America’s Erasure of History

by Stephen J. Lyons
April 2, 2025
Smoke from the Palisades Fire in Pacific Palisades, California, from Santa Monica, California, on January 7
National

Los Angeles Fire Deaths at 10 as National Guard Called In

by Staff Writer with AFP
January 10, 2025
President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shake hands during a meeting in New York on September 25, 2019
World

Zelensky Says ‘Unpredictable’ Trump Could Help End War

by Staff Writer with AFP
January 2, 2025
President Donald Trump in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House.
National

Trump Wishes ‘Merry Christmas’ to ‘Left Lunatics’ in Frenzy of Social Posts

by Staff Writer with AFP
December 27, 2024
A man holds a Romanian national flag during an anti-corruption demonstration in Romania's capital Bucharest.
World

Russia Denies Interfering in Romania Elections

by Staff Writer with AFP
December 5, 2024
Next Post
US President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the BOK Center on June 20, 2020 in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Trump’s Kung Flu Takes its Place in Chronology of Racial Fear-Mongering

US Attorney General Bill Bar.

Attorney General Barr’s Concerns Over Mail-In Voting Are Scare Tactics

Please login to join discussion

Recommended

Lula da Silva

Brazil’s Lula Calls Trump’s Tariff Threat ‘Unacceptable Blackmail’

July 18, 2025
People from Nordic countries participate in the 2025 WorldPride DC parade and celebrate LGBTQ rights in Washington DC, USA, Saturday, June 7, 2025.

Sweden Cuts Red Tape for Changing Legal Gender

July 16, 2025
Ursula von der Leyen

EU Ministers Weigh Response to Latest Trump Tariff Threat

July 14, 2025
UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese

UN Says US Sanctions on Expert Sets ‘Dangerous Precedent,’ Must Be Reversed

July 11, 2025
Women in Afghanistan wearing a blue burqa

ICC Seeks Arrest of Taliban Leaders Over Persecution of Women

July 9, 2025
Kenya, Nairobi, 2024-07-16. Protesters in the streets

Nairobi Tense as Kenya Marks Democracy Uprising

July 7, 2025

Opinion

Donald Trump

Fact vs. Fiction: The Trump Administration’s Dubious War on Reverse Discrimination

June 18, 2025
Tens of thousands of protestors shut down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan on Saturday, April 5, 2025, protesting the Trump administration's abuse of the separation of federal powers as well as the deep cuts to governmental services overseen by presidential advisor Elon Musk.

Civil Society Is Holding the Line. Will Washington Notice?

June 17, 2025
A Black Lives Matter mural in New York City.

Fuhgeddaboudit! America’s Erasure of History

April 2, 2025
Bust of Deputy Rubens Paiva in the Chamber of Deputies

Democratic Brazilians Are Still Here

March 18, 2025
A woman from Guatemala

Dispatch From Central America

January 28, 2025
US President Donald Trump

Dear Trump Supporters: Is This the America You Wanted?

January 28, 2025
Facebook Twitter

Newsletter

Do you like our reporting?
SUBSCRIBE

About Us

The Globe Post

The Globe Post is part of Globe Post Media, a U.S. digital news organization that is publishing the world's best targeted news sites.

submit oped

© 2018 The Globe Post

No Result
View All Result
  • National
  • World
  • Business
  • Interviews
  • Lifestyle
  • Democracy at Risk
    • Media Freedom
  • Opinion
    • Editorials
    • Columns
    • Book Reviews
    • Stage
  • Submit Op-ed

© 2018 The Globe Post