Kudos to Poland. It held an election and the ‘wrong’ candidate managed to win, without, as yet, any accusations of outside interference or calls for a new ballot. On Monday, the socially conservative Eurosceptic, Karol Nawrocki, was confirmed as the new president of Poland, defeating the liberal mayor of Warsaw, Rafal Trzaskowski, by the merest whisker: 50.9 to 49.1 per cent.
There was a telling media silence in the early hours of Monday morning, as the exit polls, which had allowed the centrist, pro-EU Trzaskowski to claim an early victory, were proved wrong. By morning, Nawrocki, the historian representing the nationalist Law and Justice Party, was declared the winner.
Nawrocki’s victory will come as a big disappointment to Poland’s liberal and pro-EU government, headed by Donald Tusk. It had hoped that having a president from its own Civic Platform party in Trzaskowski would remove many of the blocks, imposed by outgoing conservative president Andrzej Duda, to its legislative programme. Without a parliamentary majority, Tusk’s government – now in power for two years – has been stymied on much of what it wants to do, including liberalising the abortion law. It now finds itself in the same position as before, with Nawrocki, who takes office in August, likely to be as uncooperative on social changes as Duda.
Nawrocki’s victory will be just as unwelcome in many European countries, where it will signal the continuation of divided power in Poland and do nothing to strengthen the EU voice on Ukraine. Poland has already refused to sign up to the proposal of the UK and France for a military ‘coalition of the willing’ to serve in Ukraine, on the grounds that it has enough to do to secure its own borders, some of which are also NATO borders. That will not change now, as it perhaps might have done with a prime minister and a president facing the same way. If a coalition of the willing had ever been a serious prospect, it is probably even less of one now.
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