PiS
partisans to Polish critics: Up yours
Meet
Law and Justice’s core electorate.
By JAN CIENSKI
1/12/16, 5:30 AM CET
WARSAW — The new
Polish government is getting a lot of bad press abroad and is coming
under growing pressure at home — but this isn’t the place to hear
those views.
On Sunday, for the
69th month in a row, a crowd gathered in front of the Polish
president’s palace to commemorate the April 10, 2010 plane crash
that killed President Lech Kaczyński and 95 others.
They are the most
loyal supporters of the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS), people
who month after month, year after year, have shown up in central
Warsaw to show their support for PiS and their disdain for the
centrist Civic Platform party that ruled Poland until elections in
late October.
While the new Law
and Justice government’s actions — including steps that critics
say will hobble the Constitutional Tribunal, bring the public media
under tighter government control and politicize the civil service —
create rising concern, among the demonstrators there is nothing but
praise for the government.
“This government
talks to the people, the previous one didn’t,” said Wincenty
Seroczyński, a retired teacher. “I think that what they’ve done
so far is fantastic. The public media wasn’t really pluralistic.
Their other promises are very good as well.”
Campaign promises
Seroczyński
approvingly reeled off some of the government’s key economic
pledges. The idea of paying 500 zlotys (€116) a month per child for
families with two or more children is “hugely important because
Poland is depopulating.” Hiking taxes on banks and big shops makes
sense because, “most of them aren’t Polish and they’ve been
sucking money out of the country.”
“I
want a free country — and for the Germans to shut up and keep their
noses out of our business” — Magdalena Zalewska
“I want a free
country — and for the Germans to shut up and keep their noses out
of our business,” said Magdalena Zalewska, a retired civil servant.
Both Zalewska and
Seroczyński are regulars at the monthly commemorations. That makes
them a core part of Law and Justice’s electorate, a group that
isn’t at all shaken by the controversies surrounding the party’s
first few months in power.
“This part of the
electorate hasn’t gone away and won’t go away,” said Marek
Migalski, a political scientist at the Silesian University in
Katowice and a former Law and Justice-backed MEP. “There is no
alternative for them besides PiS. They are getting what they want:
500 zlotys per child, a tax on the ‘banksters’ and national pride
versus Germany.”
In the October 25
parliamentary election, Law and Justice took 37.6 percent of the
vote, enough for an outright majority in parliament — the first
time any party has done that since 1989. It won in part by appealing
to a more centrist electorate dissatisfied with eight years of Civic
Platform rule.
But the government’s
recent actions have stirred up strong opposition. A day earlier, as
many as 20,000 people demonstrated in front of the public television
offices in Warsaw, complaining about the new media law.
A government under
attack
The growing
controversy dogging the administration, which has also come under
fire from senior EU officials and NGOs, is scaring away some of the
lukewarm centrist voters who backed PiS last October. A new survey
shows PiS with only 27 percent support.
That’s the level
the party has maintained for close to a decade, thanks in large part
to people like those who braved the chilly Warsaw winter to
demonstrate Sunday.
The party’s core
backers tend to be older, poorer, more religious, more overtly
patriotic and often from smaller towns that have done less well out
of Poland’s quarter century of economic transformation than the big
cities, said Norbert Maliszewski, a political scientist at the
University of Warsaw.
They have been
joined by younger voters, often more nationalistic than those in
their 30s and 40s. “I see that among the students in my classes,”
said Migalski.
“I see good
changes. They’re working for the soul of the nation,” said a
bearded man holding a Polish flag, his young son at his side. He
refused to give his name.
While the flightiest
voters may have gone, the government still commands relatively deep
support among almost a third of the electorate.
Marcin Gromnicki,
the owner of an outdoor advertising business, was a little disturbed
by some of the more abrasive methods used by the government, but
generally approved of the direction of travel.
“I’d prefer it
to be calmer, but I understand why they’re acting so quickly,” he
said by telephone. “The government only has three to six months to
make changes, otherwise they run into a wall of bureaucratic
resistance. If you don’t move fast, it quickly becomes too late.”
He was particularly
approving of steps the government says it plans to take to bolster
Polish businesses, especially smaller ones.
“The role of the
state is crucial,” he said. “We need state support, and not pure
market liberalism.”
The charismatic
leader
Tax rates and state
intervention in the economy were far from the minds of the several
hundred people gathered in front of the presidential palace when
Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of PiS, twin brother of the dead
president, and by most accounts the country’s most powerful
politician, made an appearance.
As chants of
“Jarosław! Jarosław!” rang out, the party leader gave the crowd
what they were looking for.
He hinted that the
full truth about the Smolensk crash is still unknown — much of the
party rank-and-file believes it wasn’t an accident, as
investigators have determined, but that it was an assassination plot
probably steered from Moscow.
He then blasted
Germans, and in particular European Parliament President Martin
Schulz, for criticizing the changes in Poland. “No pressure and
hollering, no words, especially those which should never come from a
German’s lips, will turn us from this path,” he said to cheers
from the crowd. “We will make Poles happy.”
“We’ve finally
won,” said retired teacher Seroczyński, as he observed the
presidential palace, now occupied by Andrzej Duda, the PiS-backed
president, and the two ramrod-straight soldiers deployed to the
monthly commemoration by Antoni Macierewicz, the PiS defense
minister. “We’re gotten our country back. Poland is rising from
its knees.”
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