According to an exit poll following the Sunday elections and released early Monday, the conservative Law and Justice won 37.7 percent of the votes, trouncing the governing pro-business Civic Platform, which took 23.6 percent. Poles voted Sunday in a parliamentary election that is expected to shift powe…
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“Many party leaders have talked of wanting deeper change in Poland so, if we need to ship that, modifications to the structure are very important”, the party’s spokesman on financial affairs, Zbigniew Kuzmiuk, stated on Monday.
The party immediately signalled plans to reap new revenues from next year with a tax on bank assets, and there were also signs that it was confident of enough informal support in parliament from other parties to plan changes to Poland’s constitution.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, a Law and Justice leader, said during the campaign that refugees from the Middle East were bringing diseases like cholera and dysentery to Europe.
No leftist party will be part of the Sejm in the upcoming term. Several of his opponents accused him of using language reminiscent of that used by Nazi Germany against the Jews.
Numerous party’s supporters take for granted the EU funds that drive growth, and the freedom to easily cross European borders for travel and work. But at the same time they often resist making sacrifices themselves or changing their deeply traditional mindset, for example by accepting gay marriage or other liberal Western values.
Outgoing Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz must then present her resignation.
Law and Justice, the main opposition grouping in the previous parliament and which (although only provisional results have been announced) looks set to head up the new government, also supports Polish European Union membership.
Polish politics are rife with scandal, and Polish voters were displeased with the Civic Platform party’s recent scandals, including taped conversations between party members offering views on policy that greatly differred from the views they presented in public.
Former Prime Minister Donald Tusk – who tellingly now presides over the European Council – and his Civic Platform tried hard to shed 20th-century fears of Germany, viewing it not as an enemy but as the best partner to have to achieve its goals.
Political observers will also be watching the incoming government’s relationship with Germany.
European Union officials remember the last time Kaczynski’s PiS held power between 2005 and 2007, when Poland held up the Lisbon Treaty, sought greater voting power in the European Union and obstructed diplomacy with Russian Federation.
For Law and Justice, which also has the backing of President Andrzej Duda, that means advocating a combination of Catholic conservative moral policies and increasing state intervention in the economy to help families and the poor.
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Analysts stated PiS additionally benefited from a string of scandals linked to senior PO officers within the final two years, which had deepened many Poles’ sense of a distant, clannish and self- political and enterprise elite.
