Poland’s great democratic moment is good news for all of Europe

To be in Warsaw on Sunday evening was to expertise a uncommon second of political pleasure. Younger voters queued till the early hours to see off the xenophobic nationalist populists who’ve been dragging their nation backwards, show that even an unfair election will be gained towards the percentages, and switch Poland in direction of a contemporary European future. Neighbours introduced sizzling drinks to maintain them within the chilly. Interviewed at round 1am on Monday morning, one younger man in Wrocław stated they needed to cling in there as a result of this was a very powerful election since 1989. 

I walked to a Warsaw polling station on election day with the identical previous pals whom I had accompanied to that historic vote on 4 June 1989. With delight, they every selected one title from the lengthy record of parliamentary candidates. With equal delight, they refused even to take the poll paper for the simultaneous referendum which – with its ludicrously biassed questions on issues like an alleged “pressured relocation mechanism” for unlawful immigrants supposedly “imposed by the European paperwork” – was successfully election propaganda for the ruling Legislation and Justice social gathering (PiS). However my pals and I had been filled with nervous anticipation. 

Anna instructed me that whereas in 1989 her dominant emotion had been hope, now it was worry. Her daughter, who was simply seven in 1989, nervous what extra the ruling social gathering may do to poison younger minds and destroy her personal seven-year-old daughter’s schooling. However then, beginning with the primary exit polls at 9 pm, our foreboding turned to aid after which pleasure. 

Regardless of being solely semi-free, that 1989 election opened the door to democracy in Poland. Regardless of being unfair in a number of methods, not least within the crude, mendacious propaganda pumped out by all state-controlled media, this one ought to reverse Poland’s slide in direction of the type of electoral authoritarianism practised by Viktor Orbán in Hungary. 

Turnout, at a report almost 74 % on the present rely, was totally 10 % increased than in 1989. Reversing a continent-wide pattern, first estimates recommend that voters underneath 29 turned out in bigger numbers than these over 60. It appears younger Poles lastly understood that their future was at stake. No matter occurs subsequent, this was an amazing democratic second. The folks spoke and stated they wished a unique authorities. 

Except present projections are badly mistaken, the democratic opposition events could have a transparent parliamentary majority over PiS and its potential accomplice, the wild Konfederacja social gathering, which had threatened to choose up a big youth vote.

Why did the opposition win? We’ll want extra time to know this totally, and there at all times stays a fog of wonderful thriller round how and why hundreds of thousands of particular person folks in the end resolve to vote a technique reasonably than one other. Nonetheless, we will see that many citizens merely bought fed up with the crude, mendacious, corrupt, petty, backward-looking, obscurantist rule of the social gathering led by the 74-year previous Jarosław Kaczyński, who’s a type of one-man strolling anthology of resentment. 

Some had been alarmed by opposition warnings that the anti-Brussels course of PiS may finally result in Polexit. (The extra rapid hazard was that it could be a part of forces with Orbán, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and the Slovak populist Robert Fico to tug the whole EU additional to the appropriate.)

Subsequent to the younger, it is going to be attention-grabbing to see how girls voted, confronted with a reactionary, patriarchal social gathering imposing one of many strictest anti-abortion legal guidelines in Europe. Round 600,000 Poles overseas registered to vote, though their affect on the precise consequence might be (unfairly) marginal.

Large credit score should go to Donald Tusk, the chief of the biggest opposition record, the Civic Coalition, which has at its core the Civic Platform social gathering he co-founded within the early 2000s. I have to confess I used to be sceptical in regards to the return to the entrance line of Polish politics of the 66-year-old former president of the European Council. It felt a bit like Tony Blair resuming the management of the British Labour Get together – and Tusk, like Blair, does have lots of people who cannot stand him. However he fought his manner via a barrage of toxic abuse, ludicrously accusing him of being the German candidate, and this victory is in vital measure his.

I got here to Warsaw immediately from Istanbul, the place my liberal democratic pals are in deep despair after a united opposition didn’t defeat president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in an election earlier this yr. Final spring, I watched a united opposition in Hungary go down badly towards Orbán. In Poland, my pals and I had been additionally urging the opposition to unite – which it didn’t do. But it might prove that the very fact there have been three totally different opposition lists to select from – Tusk’s Civic Coalition, the Third Approach (combining two events broadly acceptable to liberal Catholic voters) and the New Left –really ended up maximising the opposition vote.

I simply realized a brand new Polish phrase: depisyzacja, that’s, “dePiSisation”, by analogy with decommunisation. However taking the PiS out of the Polish state might be a troublesome job

It is nonetheless early days. Resentment-tsar Kaczyński could but have a couple of soiled tips up his sleeve. President Andrzej Duda will give him the primary probability of forming a authorities, so it may take months earlier than energy lastly adjustments fingers. Such a various opposition coalition could also be fractious in authorities (assume Germany). 

Then there’ll be the large problem of reversing PiS’s creeping state seize. I simply realized a brand new Polish phrase: depisyzacja, that’s, “dePiSisation”, by analogy with decommunisation. However taking the PiS out of the Polish state might be a troublesome job. It means restoring the independence of the courts, turning state media into correct public service media, undoing deep political penetration of the civil service and state-owned enterprises, re-drawing constituency boundaries in order that they mirror inhabitants adjustments – and extra. Restored EU funding will assist, however nobody is aware of the true situation of Poland’s public funds and there is a warfare grinding on subsequent door in Ukraine.

PiS stays the social gathering which gained the one largest share of the vote. In massive cities, almost half the votes went to opposition events and fewer than 1 / 4 to PiS, however within the countryside it was the opposite manner spherical. Civic Platform should present it has realized from its errors within the 2000s and respect the issues of a poorer, extra conservative, Catholic, rural and small city Poland. And the opposition must keep away from the temptation merely to take revenge – a sure Polish speciality splendidly depicted in Andrzej Wajda’s movie of the traditional Polish comedy Revenge.

However enough unto the day are the evils thereof. I discover this morning that the presenters on the impartial, opposition-supporting TV channel TVN can hardly cease smiling – and, frankly, nor can I. Poland’s populist nightmare is sort of over and all Europe will profit in consequence. 

Timothy Garton Ash’s most up-to-date e book is Homelands: A Private Historical past of Europe

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