2023-10-14 13:44:18
There will definitely not be any celebrations on this election Sunday in Poland. The division and polarization of society in Poland has reached a new high. A survey on Platform Accordingly, several million people in both political camps are not ready for this.
Gerhard Gnauck
Political correspondent for Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania based in Warsaw.
What then? Emigrate? Planning a coup? Or divide the country again like in the 18th century and move all liberal-minded citizens to the area to the west and the conservative ones to the part east of the Vistula? This is what the Warsaw writer Antoni Libera suggested in a much-discussed essay. If there were to be a “bad word of the year” to choose from in Poland, like in Germany, then this term would have a good chance: “wojna polsko-polska”, the Polish-Polish war. The election campaign air is full of war cries. Meanwhile, the leading candidates on both sides are speaking openly about their respective fights against “evil.”
The political division in Poland has already destroyed many friendships and plunged families into strife. The FAS has tried to speak to families who clearly belong to one of the two camps. The search was difficult: many people only wanted to talk to journalists about their values and views under a pseudonym, some didn’t even want to. The reasons ranged from “I’m not that extroverted” to “I’m afraid of harassment if someone close to me reads this and recognizes me.” Pervasive social media has, in its own way, contributed to a climate of caution, even fear.
Two families were still willing to talk. They live in the country’s two largest cities, one in Warsaw and the other in Krakow. The parents are all around 50, their level of education is comparable, they have had good careers in Europe and North America, and they have a lot of other things in common too. They have underage children, no television, and they have a bad opinion of Gerhard Schröder.
National conservative or right-wing populist?
Her grandparents experienced terrible things during the Second World War: expulsion from their home and farm by the Germans, murder by the Soviet secret police, death in a hail of bullets during the Warsaw Uprising. Both families have something else in common: In both families, in the 2003 referendum on upcoming EU accession, the parents voted “yes”, as did a good three quarters of Poles. But then they parted ways. Today they face each other on different sides of the barricades. They also see the EU very differently today.
The number one spouses are musicians. Let’s call them Pan Andrzej, Mr. Andreas, and Pani Barbara, Ms. Barbara. They will vote for the ruling PiS, that is certain for them. The party with the full name “Law and Justice”, which is borrowed from the Bible, is classified by many in Germany as national conservative or right-wing populist. The party with its chairman Jarosław Kaczyński, which is clearly described as an opponent by all parties in the Bundestag except the AfD.
So why PiS? What is your key argument for voting for the ruling party? Pani Barbara and Pan Andrzej look at each other briefly, then the woman answers on her behalf: “Security.” The top candidate Donald Tusk, head of government until 2014, then president of the EU Council, now leader of the opposition, had one back then, ten or twelve years ago Naive policy of rapprochement, even dalliance with Putin, pursued with Russia. Barbara doesn’t say that this accusation should also affect Angela Merkel and Barack Obama.
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