Final showdown: Polish leaders in one last election battle
09/10/2023 12:32
*
Nationalists' Kaczynski avoids debate with liberal Tusk
*
Kaczynski-Tusk rivalry has long defined Polish politics
*
Traded accusations of 'evil' in deeply polarised nation
By Alan Charlish
WARSAW, Oct 9 (Reuters) - For the leader of Poland's
largest opposition grouping, there was no doubt who he wanted to
come face-to-face with in a televised debate ahead of a closely
fought Oct. 15 parliamentary election.
"Jarek, where are you?" Donald Tusk called out during a
recent campaign rally. "Where are you hiding?"
The Civic Coalition (KO) leader was addressing Jaroslaw
Kaczynski, leader of the ruling nationalist Law and Justice
(PiS) party. Kaczynski opted not to take part in Monday night's
debate; the government sent Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki
instead.
While on paper, Morawiecki may outrank the 74-year-old
deputy prime minister, most people regard the twin brother of
late president Lech Kaczynski as the man who really holds power
in Poland, a European Union and NATO member.
The rivalry between Tusk, 66, and Kaczynski has been at the
heart of Polish public life for a generation, while the split
between the pro-European liberalism of the KO and the
conservative social values and left-leaning economics of PiS has
come to define Poland's polarised political landscape.
Kaczynski, who launched PiS in 2001 with his brother, and
Tusk, a former European Council president, last met in a public
debate in 2007. Many political observers have said that
encounter was a turning point which cost PiS that election.
But with the two leaders advancing in years, the 2023
campaign is likely to mark their final showdown.
"There will no longer be such a battle between such camps,
because regardless of the election result, this arrangement is
over," said Anna Materska-Sosnowska, a political scientist at
Warsaw University.
TRADING ACCUSATIONS OF 'EVIL'
Tusk and Kaczynski have known each other since the 1980s and
were once on the same side in Poland's anti-communist opposition
of that time, but their relationship is now marked by deep
animosity.
"Tusk is the personification of evil in Poland," Kaczynski
told supporters at an election rally in August.
"Evil rules in Poland," Tusk, a former prime minister, told
supporters upon his return to Polish politics in 2021 after
almost seven years away from domestic politics.
Polls show that PiS is likely to remain the largest party in
parliament in the Oct. 15 election but may have to rely on the
far-right Confederation party to form a government.
This would be the latest challenge for Kaczynski in a career
that has seen him hold together many of the often fractious
elements of Poland's religious conservative right.
For PiS lawmaker Marek Suski, without Kaczynski's presence,
the right would face an uncertain future.
"If he retired, there could be some clear cracks here, which
would be bad for the right wing and for Poland," he said.
Tusk is also seen by his supporters as a man who can bring
Poland's diverse opposition parties together.
"At the moment he is not the bearer of one ideology, he is
the leader of the entire opposition which cannot be confined to
one ideology," said Bogdan Borusewicz, the deputy speaker of
Poland's upper house of parliament.
INTELLIGENTSIA
Kaczynski and his twin brother, who served as president from
2005 until his death in an air disaster in 2010, grew up in
Zoliborz, a Warsaw neighbourhood synonymous with Poland's
educated elite.
"He is a first-rate intellectual of the old style but he has
a narrow world view because he doesn't know the world," says a
childhood friend who declined to be named. Kaczynski is a
childless bachelor who rarely travels abroad.
Kaczynski holds Tusk responsible for his brother's death in
the air crash in Smolensk, Russia, which he says was an attack
facilitated by his opponent's efforts to normalise relations
with Russia when he was prime minister. Opposition supporters
reject this as a conspiracy theory.
For his critics, Kaczynski has spearheaded an erosion of
democratic standards that brought Poland into conflict with the
EU, while demonising minorities such as immigrants or the LGBT
community.
However, his supporters regard him as a defender of Catholic
traditions and poorer Poles.
"Jaroslaw Kaczynski has always talked about justice, that
Poland should take care of all citizens fairly, and what is fair
is supporting those who have limitations for various reasons,
whether for health reasons or for social, economic... reasons,"
said Suski.
BRUSSELS
Tusk viewed the changes made in Poland by the PiS government
elected in 2015 from Brussels. In his memoir of his time as
European Council president, he writes of his doubts as to
whether he had done the right thing by stepping away from the
domestic scene.
"A persistent thought comes back and gnaws at the inside of
my brain: Did I do the right thing by leaving," he said in the
diary entry for the day in 2015 that PiS took power.
Since returning to Polish politics in 2021, Tusk has been
subjected to intense attacks from state media portraying him as
a German puppet representing the interests of an arrogant urban
elite. Critics say state TV has been turned from a public
service broadcaster into an outlet for government propaganda.
"He is withstanding this attack ... He is in good shape, but
he is the main opponent at the moment of all the propaganda of
the PiS government," said Borusewicz.
(Reporting by Alan Charlish, additional reporting by Malgorzata
Wojtunik and Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk; editing by Mark Heinrich)
((alan.charlish@thomsonreuters.com;))