ONLY one thing is generally agreed about the result of Poland’s election held on October 25th; for the victors, it was a triumph on a scale that nobody else has managed to achieve during the quarter-century since multi-party democracy was ushered in.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the veteran leader of Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS), is the architect of that success. His party came first with 37.6% of the vote, giving it 235 out of 460 seats in the lower chamber of parliament (the Sejm) and the first independent majority in post-communist Poland. The centrist Civic Platform (PO) party, in power since 2007, finished with 24.1% of the vote. As PiS savours its victory, people at home and abroad are wondering where its ideological heart lies.
On the pessimistic side, liberals at home and abroad are warning of the “Orbanisation” of Poland; they fear the country might now follow the example of Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister who is seen by critics as a curber of liberty and a xenophobic nationalist.
PiS politicians much prefer comparisons with the British Conservative Party, with which they are closely...Continue reading
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