Poland's populist Law and Justice party increases majority

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/14/poland-populist-law-and-justice-party-increases-majority

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Poland’s ruling rightwing Law and Justice party has scored a convincing victory in Sunday’s parliamentary elections, with almost complete results indicating a parliamentary majority and another four-year term in office.

According to results from 99.5% of constituencies published by the electoral committee on Monday, Law and Justice took 43.8% of the vote, ahead of the country’s biggest opposition grouping, the liberal centre-right Civic Coalition, on 27.2%. The leftist alliance the Left took 12.5%, the agrarian PSL and anti-establishment Kukiz’15 8.6% and the far-right Confederation 6.8%.“We have reason to be happy”, the PiS leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, told supporters on Sunday night.The results appeared to vindicate the party’s political strategy of combining a big increase in social spending in certain areas, most notably the introduction of an expensive new child benefit programme, with nationalist and traditionalist rhetoric, and an uncompromising authoritarian political style that has exacerbated existing divisions in Polish society.They also crown a dismal four years for the mainstream Polish opposition, which was energised by large-scale demonstrations in 2016 and 2017 against PiS’s attempts to assert direct control over the country’s democratic institutions, most notably the judiciary, but which has failed to formulate a convincing alternative programme. Pressure is mounting on Grzegorz Schetyna, a former foreign minister who leads the centre-right Civic Platform, the largest party in the Civic Coalition. The government’s increases in welfare spending were made against the backdrop of a booming economy and record consumer confidence. A central issue in these elections was the flagship child benefit programme 500+, which gives families 500 zloty (£100) a month per child. Civic Platform had opposed the policy before the 2015 parliamentary elections, arguing that it was unaffordable. But the party has since said it would retain the 500+ if elected. Observers argue that this U-turn and PiS’s ability to deliver the programme may have undermined the opposition’s credibility among voters.Sunday’s PiS victory could also prove a headache for Brussels and several European capitals. In government, the party has been an uncompromising and at times exasperating EU member, as illustrated by a farcical episode in 2017 when it tried to torpedo the re-election of Donald Tusk, a former leader of Civic Platform, as president of the European council. For years, Warsaw has sparred with the European commission over PiS’s attempts to assert direct control over the Polish judiciary, with several cases referred to the European court of justice. Under PiS, Poland has emerged as an active opponent of the liberal democratic values that underpin the EU, with European diplomats admitting in private that many in Brussels had hoped the problem would be taken out of their hands by Polish voters. “There was a hope that PiS would lose, but that has not materialised,” said Piotr Buras, director of the Warsaw office of the European Council on Foreign Relations thinktank. “This is not just an issue for Brussels, but for several European capitals - they will have to deal with an emboldened partner.

“The dilemma is that Poland under PiS is already a semi-authoritarian regime, and it is only likely to deteriorate further. There will be a temptation to turn a blind eye to abuses and normalise relations, but this could come at a cost to their red lines on democratic values.”