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Poland’s presidential elections will pit Warsaw’s liberal mayor because the candidate of Donald Tusk’s ruling party against a historian chosen on Sunday by the right-wing opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party.
The consequence of next May’s vote could unlock Prime Minister Tusk’s reform agenda, which has been stalled by outgoing rightwing President Andrzej Duda since PiS was ousted from office last December. Duda, a PiS nominee, has used his second and final term to dam a few of Tusk’s bills and stop his pro-EU coalition government from replacing PiS-nominated judges and ambassadors.
Jarosław Kaczyński, the longstanding leader of PiS, bypassed some experienced politicians to pick 41-year-old Karol Nawrocki, who leads Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance and previously managed a war museum in his city of Gdańsk.
Nawrocki is little-known to voters but can potentially solid himself as a part of a brand new generation who was outside government throughout the two previous PiS terms. The alternative can also be seen as an try and repeat Duda’s winning path from outsider to the presidential palace in 2015.
Still, the frontrunner next May is ready to be Rafał Trzaskowski, the Warsaw mayor who was nominated on Saturday after comfortably beating foreign minister Radosław Sikorski in primaries held by Tusk’s ruling Civic Coalition.
It should be Trzaskowski’s second try and turn out to be president after he narrowly lost to Duda in 2020. Trzaskowski, 52, is a supporter of LGBTQ rights and in May he introduced a ban on religious symbols inside Warsaw’s city hall. He can also be credited with build up support for Tusk’s party amongst younger voters, which proved crucial in last 12 months’s parliamentary elections when turnout hit a record 74 per cent.
He promised on Saturday to “get up Poland” before next May’s elections, saying: “I even have a whole lot of energy to win against PiS.”
Nawrocki on Sunday underlined his academic somewhat than political background, in addition to his Catholic values, by also taking a swipe at Trzaskowski for banning crosses. “We can’t be ashamed of those values and take down crosses within the offices of the Polish capital,” he said. Nawrocki added that he wanted “to have the option to say with full responsibility that I’m able to represent all Poles”.
Opinion polls carried out before either of the 2 important parties had chosen their candidates suggested that the Civic Coalition candidate would beat the PiS nominee within the second round of presidential voting.
However the consequence is prone to hinge on who can attract many of the votes won by other candidates in the primary round.
Amongst other nominees to this point, the Poland 2050 party — one among Tusk’s coalition partners — is fielding its leader Szymon Hołownia, while the far-right Confederation party chosen its co-chair Sławomir Mentzen.
PiS didn’t hold primaries to pick its candidate. As an alternative it essentially left the alternative within the hands of Kaczyński, who had recently joked that he would “roll the dice” before deciding.
While Trzaskowski’s second bid for the presidency was anticipated, Sikorski emerged as a late rival after Tusk’s party decided to carry primaries earlier this month.
Sikorski campaigned as a hardline defender of national security who also pushed for tougher controls on migration and backed Polish claims against Germany and Ukraine referring to atrocities committed throughout the second world war.
Earlier this week Tusk unexpectedly waded into the competition by releasing a self-commissioned opinion poll that put Trzaskowski ahead of Sikorski and whose result he called “clear”.
Trzaskowski won almost 75 per cent of the votes solid by 22,000 Civic Coalition members.
After announcing Trzaskowski’s victory, Tusk said: “Everyone knows that this is step one, that no one will give our candidate anything without spending a dime . . . We could have to fight for each vote, persuade every Polish woman, every Polish man until the last day of the [presidential] elections.”
