Poland's conservatives gain traction after presidential win
Poland's main opposition party, the socially-conservative Law and Justice (PiS), has seen a renewed boost in confidence after its presidential candidate, Karol Nawrocki, won against the centrist frontrunner Rafal Trzaskowski.
PiS organised a party rally in the town of Pultusk, north of Warsaw, on Sunday to cement its ranks before a planned tour of Poland that is aimed to secure an election win in the 2027 parliamentary ballot.
PiS, a party with a Eurosceptic and anti-immigration agenda focusing on traditional and nationalist values, was ousted from power after eight years in government in the autumn of 2023, losing to a tripartite coalition of pro-European rivals, led by the centrist Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski was triumphant in his speech to party activists, saying that Nawrocki's swearing-in as Poland's president on August 6 will set "the path to victory in the parliamentary election."
Kaczynski said that his party "in coming weeks" was going to set off "on a great march across Poland," also to constituencies where PiS had lost.
Despite being a key figure at Sunday's PiS rally and full support from the party during his presidential campaign, Nawrocki said he was "a grassroot and non-partisan candidate."
"As soon as August 7, I will present tangible initiatives which will be the fulfilment of the plan that 11 million Poles voted in favour of," he said.
He also referred to future cooperation with Tusk's centrist government, with which he is at odds.
"Prime minister, we need to start getting used to each other, it's time to drop the hysteria and stop destroying the Polish democracy and instead cooperate with the future president to the extent that is viable," he said.
Referring to his programme, Nawrocki said: "Poland first, Poles, national interest and our values first."
Nawrocki, a right-wing historian, narrowly won against Trzaskowski, the Warsaw mayor, in the June 1 run-off presidential ballot, but the difference was relatively small, as Nawrocki won 50.89 percent of the vote while Trzaskowski took 49.11 percent.
Soon after the election, irregularities related to the vote count started to be reported by Polish media, including cases of assigning Trzaskowski's votes to Nawrocki in some electoral commissions, and vice versa, usually in favour of the conservative candidate. Suspected irregularities also included sudden surges of support for Nawrocki when compared with his result in the first round of the ballot.
After the election, Poles flooded the Supreme Court (SN), which validates the result, with tens of thousands of election protests. Aleksander Stepkowski, SN spokesman, told PAP on Friday that the total number of protests may be over 50,000.
However, when PiS was in power, it created a new unit within SN, the Chamber of Extraordinary Control and Public Affairs, and transferred to it the responsibility for the validation of elections. Additionally, the new chamber is composed solely of the so-called neo-judges, or judges appointed in a procedure that EU courts and Poland's current pro-EU government consider as a violation of the rule of law. (PAP)
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