In last month’s parliamentary elections in Poland, the right-wing Law and Justice Party won a clear majority. With the opposition abated, they are now setting their sights on rewriting the constitution and dramatically changing the Polish political system. But will they succeed? This article was written for Visegrad Revue When Visegrad Revue asked me to […]
Poland
Poland can’t take chances with PiS
In his recent article in Politico, Adrian Karatnycky calls for Poles to “Give PiS a chance.” They did give PiS a chance, when they elected the party to power about six weeks ago, and it was enough for PiS to completely squander this mandate of trust. The thing is that Poles just don’t trust the […]
Tens of thousands of people protested on the streets in Poland. What is their anger about?
Poles voted Prawo i Sprawiedliwość to power as they believed in their promises of delivering “higher quality of democracy”. But for last month Kaczyński and his party did exactly the opposite. Recent attempts to take over the state institution made Poles really angry. According to different sources, 50 000 to 70 000 people took the […]
Why is Polish youth so right wing?
After presidential and parliamentary elections, Poland found itself in totally new situation. For the first time, there is no left in the parliament and the right wing Prawo i Sprawiedliwość has almost all power in it’s hands. With the weak opposition from crumbling Platforma Obywatelska, newbies from .Nowoczesna and few survivors of Peasant’ party they […]
Kaczyński wins. So does Poland as well?
In last month’s parliamentary elections in Poland, the victorious, right-wing Law and Justice Party made history as the first party to win a majority government in a free election. With the opposition abated, they are now setting their sights on rewriting the constitution and dramatically changing the Polish political system. But will they succeed? This […]
Prawo i Sprawiedliwosć sticks out middle finger to its voters.
The number of the hard line Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice) followers remains constant and it would not be sufficient to ensure its victory. Therefore apart from people’s disaffection to Platforma Obywatelska (Civic Platform), it owes it’s success to the people, who believed in their picture that new people have taken over and Beata Szydło’s […]
Landscape before parliamentary elections in Poland
Oncoming parliamentary election in Poland might be the most significant ones in more than a decade. Andrzej Duda’s victory in presidential elections earlier this year proved that skillfull play on moods of the public, tired with 8 years of Platforma Obywatelska government, fueled with strong smearing campaign might result in such suprising results as a […]
Why Poles in UK get frustrated.
Although it was probably no surprise to anyone that today’s „Polish strike” turned out to be total failure (on demonstration outside Westminster journalists strongly outnumbered protesters), the frustration of some Poles is a fact. Some Britons cannot really see why, after all we are free to settle in this country and are treated nicely and seen […]
What is Cameron’s door canvassing around Europe really about?
David Cameron ventured onto door-canvassing trip around European capital cities. Although he claims to be all for Britain staying in EU, he demands renegotiation of the basic points of the treaty. But is it really needed to bother anyone else and try to force them to take actions that might result in two-speeds Europe, if […]
Surprising results of the Polish presidential elections
Not long ago, everyone expected that Bronisław Komorowski will easily secure his position for the second term in first round of the votes. As a result, leaders of the other parties did not even attempted to fight him in order to not become a face of defeat. The only exception was Janusz Palikot, but he […]