Poland election: the opposition has claimed victory – what happens next? | Jakub Jaraczewski, Sylwia Chutnik and Wojciech Orliński

Jakub Jaraczewski: Restoring the rule of law won’t be easy, but this is the first step

Pro-democratic Poles can be cautiously happy. The ruling rightwing party Law and Justice (PiS) may have come first in an unfair election that stacked the odds in its favour, but it is unlikely to be able to form a government, either alone or in coalition with the far-right Konfederacja party.

The new government will almost certainly be formed by three groups: the centrist-liberal Civic Coalition, led by Donald Tusk, the centrist Third Way and the Left, an alliance of leftist parties and movements.

They agree on some issues: Poland’s place in the EU, restoring the rule of law, support for Ukraine and defence against Russia. They’re less aligned on the economy and climate action, but there’s a credible expectation that they will be able to set their differences aside and try to repair the country.

The road ahead is nevertheless a bumpy one. President Andrzej Duda, a PiS ally, will likely give PiS a first shot at forming a government. It will probably try to negotiate, entice and coax some opposition politicians to form a majority. Expect several weeks spent nervously watching as PiS signals it is “very close” to being able to regain its hold on power. But any new PiS government would almost certainly lose a vote of confidence in the new parliament, leading to the opposition appointing a prime minister.

If, as expected, a centre-left coalition government takes charge, restoring the rule of law will still be an arduous task. The country is deeply polarised after eight years of PiS rule. There are multiple obstacles, some resulting from the democratic process, some being tripwires installed by PiS to hinder any attempts to dislodge its people from state institutions. Fortunately, the 1997 Polish constitution was not altered, as, despite lofty ambitions to reshape it, PiS consistently lacked the votes to pass the heightened parliamentary threshold needed to do so.

The biggest obstacle to any reform will be Duda, whose second and last term continues until 2025. He wields the power of legislative veto over legislation passed by parliament. Parliament can defeat such a veto, but the current opposition will lack the votes needed to do so. Tusk and his allies will have to either negotiate with Duda or hold off any significant reforms until the next presidential election.

Another hurdle will be the captured institutions, such as the constitutional tribunal and the national council of the judiciary. Both have been packed with PiS loyalists. Both could hinder attempts to rebuild the Polish legal landscape, with the tribunal able to annul laws by declaring them incompatible with the constitution. The council of the judiciary can recommend judges loyal to PiS for appointment by Duda. Reforming either will require legislation that Duda can block via veto.

Thus, the road towards Poland becoming once again a democracy where the core European values of the rule of law and human rights are observed isn’t going to be easy. But Poles have taken the first step towards getting there.

Jakub Jaraczewski is a research coordinator at Democracy Reporting International, Berlin

Sylwia Chutnik: Women and minorities targeted by PiS can now begin to hope

These results raise great hopes, especially among women and minority groups such as queer people and migrants. For the past eight years, not only have we been targeted in the ruling party’s attempt to destabilise the entire Polish democratic political system, but we have seen continuous violations of human rights and the spread of hate speech from those in power.

The Polish president, Andrzej Duda (supported by the ruling Law and Justice party), suggested for example during the election campaign that LGBTQ+ people were not really people but an ideology.

A near-total ban on abortion enabled by a judgment of the constitutional tribunal in 2020 brought hundreds of thousands of people on to the streets, rallying under the banner of the Women’s Strike. But that did not stop our rights being curtailed, and at least six women were forced to carry a dead foetus to term, dying of sepsis in our public hospitals.

A 187-kilometre (116-mile) fence was built on the Polish-Belarusian border to stop desperate migrants from crossing. Not only did this involve the repeated use of violent migrant pushbacks, which are in contravention of international refugee law, but protected natural areas including the Białowieża forest world heritage site were irreversibly damaged in the process.

There are many more examples, so it is not surprising that the combined opposition – although it fielded three separate three parties – emphasised that a vote for any of them would help to dislodge the united right. We will now expect the Civic Coalition, the Third Way (centre) and the Left party to combine, if they form the next government, to restore the rights of women and minority groups.

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So what is the landscape after the battle? It will remain difficult because internal social divisions are so entrenched, but there is enough support for progressive aspirations to make me hope that we can break the cycle of constant vitriol, tension and polarisation. To restore peace and slowly rebuild a democratic society is our task for the next four years. PiS managed to survive but its grip on power looks to be over for now. The overwhelming feeling today is of relief.

Sylwia Chutnik is a Polish writer and social commentator

Wojciech Orliński: The message is clear: we want to go west, not east

Poland seems to be back on the pro-western track that it chose 34 years ago after the cold war. The message delivered by Polish society is clear: we don’t want politicians who are fighting with the European Union and who advocate closer ties with Russia. We want to go west, not east. With the highest voter turnout since the restoration of democracy in 1989, that message could not be more potent.

The rightwing populist Law and Justice party (PiS), which has governed for eight years, failed to win a majority of seats. The three parties of the liberal opposition will most likely form a coalition, even if it takes until next month for it to be done.

Konfederacja (Confederation), a far-right party, roughly equivalent to Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, the Sweden Democrats or Alternative für Deutschland, experienced a trainwreck defeat. It was riding high in the opinion polls until recently, and was expected by many to be the kingmaker in the future Sejm. It won some seats but will probably be too weak to have its own parliamentary group (klub in Polish political parlance), which renders it barely relevant.

PiS deployed a whole arsenal of Viktor Orbán-style dirty tricks to regain power. The election debate on state television was a travesty – the hosts not even trying to hide their pro-PiS sentiments, with lengthy questions that were actually pro-government statements. The elections were combined with a weird referendum, with lengthy non-questions full of PiS propaganda. The cherry on top was that just before the ballot weekend, pensioners received a surprise “14th pension”, all teachers got an unexpected one-time bonus and the state-owned petrol corporation cut fuel prices.

Most of these tricks backfired. Since everybody knew “election fuel prices” would be gone soon, motorists started to panic-buy – resulting in fuel shortages across the country. The government denied them, so the crisis was always explained as “pump malfunction”. For even for the most ardent PiS supporters this was too much.

The new government will still face a difficult task. It will have to “cohabit” with the pro-PiS president, Andrzej Duda, until 2025. Many public institutions (courts, the media, education, health services, the police, the army) are devastated by ill-conceived reforms and need jumpstarting. The publicly owned media will need rebuilding from scratch. But is politics ever an easy task? Certainly not in Poland.

Wojciech Orliński is a Polish journalist, writer and academic