Gay
Polish mayor becomes opposition icon
Robert
Biedroń is a progressive and openly gay mayor in one of Europe’s
most conservative countries.
By CLAUDIA CIOBANU
10/5/16, 5:27 AM CET
SŁUPSK, Poland —
Poland’s right-wing government has put it on the fringes of Europe
on issues that include abortion, migration and democracy. But a
charismatic 40-year-old mayor is leading a counter-cultural charge
from the Baltic coast city of Słupsk.
Robert Biedroń, the
country’s only openly gay mayor, has become one of the leading
voices of opposition to the nationalist Law and Justice party,
igniting hope among liberal commentators who have suggested he should
run for president in 2020.
In both word and
deed, Biedroń is proving to be a very different kind of Polish
politician — one who openly embraces secular and liberal values as
well as a radical open-door policy.
In the town hall,
there are no security checks en route to his office and it’s common
for people to grab him in the corridor to speak. Occasionally, he
will even take a red sofa into town and invite people to sit down and
chat. This “red sofa method,” he says, is a way to gather
information about voters’ concerns.
“I spend all day
in a castle,” Biedroń said during an interview in the city hall, a
neo-gothic building from 1901. “But I will not close myself in a
mental castle. I cannot make decisions unless I feel the heart of the
city.”
And the city will
come to him. On a recent day, a pensioner walked straight into his
office saying, “I really need to sit down and talk to you, Mr.
Mayor.” A woman grabbed him in the corridor to explain a parking
problem. Someone else was shocked the mayor didn’t instantly
recollect her name.
“He is trying to
show how local administration and democracy should really work,”
said a 30-year-old resident of Słupsk named Michał. “That they
should mean serving people, not abusing them.”
Profound changes
Słupsk, which is
home to about 90,000 people, is the fifth most indebted town in
Poland, and Biedroń, a political scientist by education, is on a
mission to cut the €63 million deficit. So far, he has managed to
bring it down 10 percent. He has led by example, making the town hall
a paragon of frugality: volunteering for a salary cut and giving up
his official limousine to bike to work. Visitors are offered water
from the tap instead of bottled water.
But there have been
other, more profound, changes.
After becoming mayor
two years ago, he removed a portrait of Pope John Paul II, a national
hero, from his office, arguing state institutions should be secular.
This year, in response to an anti-migrant social media post by a
Słupsk teacher, he brought a refugee family to her class to
challenge her views.
Couples from across
Poland have journeyed to Słupsk to have Biedroń solemnize their
ceremonies
More recently, he
has denounced the hardline abortion legislation before parliament
which would completely ban the procedure, even in cases of rape,
incest or fetal deformation, and has warned that Poland is at risk of
becoming an “authoritarian democracy.”
A long-term activist
for LGBT rights, Biedroń became Poland’s first openly gay member
of parliament running for the liberal Palikot Movement. While a
parliamentarian, he was beaten up on the streets, he said. “But I
knew this was the only way: If people were not directly confronted
with me, they wouldn’t have a chance to change their minds about
gays.”
Although Poland
doesn’t allow civil partnership for gays, let alone gay marriage,
couples from across Poland have journeyed to Słupsk to have Biedroń
solemnize their ceremonies.
In 2014, when he ran
for mayor, voters backed him because they felt he was listening to
them. But he also cleverly tapped into Słupsk’s resentment at
being overshadowed by bigger nearby cities such as Gdańsk and
displayed a knack for retail politics, winning the mayoral seat by
running a door-to-door cashless campaign.
It has not gone
unnoticed.
People attend the
anti-government, pro-abortion demonstration in front of the Polish
parliament in Warsaw on October 1, 2016
The columnist Witold
Gadomski described him as “one of the most interesting Polish
politicians” in the pages of the Gazeta Wyborcza, one of the
country’s leading papers, writing: “All parties that aren’t
xenophobic, nationalist and narrow-minded should fight for him.”
A country divided
Biedroń’s success
in Słupsk underlines that Poland is a complicated place politically,
especially since elections last year when the Law and Justice party’s
victory effectively split the country into two hostile camps.
The government,
which is making waves at home and abroad with its hardline stance on
abortion and migration, won its absolutely parliamentary majority
with only 37.6 percent of the national vote, thanks to quirks in the
voter allocation system. That means there are many Poles who don’t
agree with the government’s conservative line — and Biedroń has
become one of their voices.
While Law and
Justice tends to do best in smaller towns and villages, where many
people are upset over the turbulence of a quarter century of
post-communist economic reforms, the small town of Słupsk doesn’t
quite fit that profile. Like other parts of western Poland, it is
less religious and more liberal than the east.
Biedroń describes
it as a place where “everyone is a refugee,” alluding to its
turbulent history. The city was German and known as Stolp until the
end of the Second World War. After 1945, Poles, Ukrainians and others
from the east were settled in Słupsk, replacing relocated Germans
and murdered Jews.
Situated about 20
kilometers from the Baltic Sea, the city is green and compact and
Biedroń’s administration has started to get rid of cars in the old
town to make space for a pedestrian area with benches, cafes and
restaurants. To combat urban flight, businesses in the city center
get property tax breaks to encourage them to stay.
Rising star
Biedroń may be
popular in his hometown, but a national path would not be without
obstacles. For one thing, the liberal opposition is fragmented with
no party coming close to Law and Justice in the polls.
Biedroń himself has
refused to entertain speculations about running for national office,
saying he is content where he is. Still, the government’s
right-wing policies have made Biedroń more visible on the national
stage as a voice of opposition.
“What’s now
being served to us is a political roller-coaster ride with no safety
restraints and we don’t know where it will end,” he recently told
the news portal onet.pl.
He does allow that
the ruling party’s popular and generous social promises, especially
a subsidy paid to families with many children, have some merit. And
in his town, he invests in policies for the poor, such as social
housing.
Still, Biedroń is
politically very far removed from the Law and Justice party. And he
is no fan of the Civic Platform party that ruled Poland from
2007-2015, either.
Civic Platform and
its leader, then-prime minister Donald Tusk — now European Council
president — balked at pushing through socially liberal reforms,
afraid of alienating more conservative voters and the powerful Roman
Catholic Church.
“Donald Tusk also
promised a law on civil partnerships and [said] that he wouldn’t
kneel in front of priests. What came of that? Nothing,” Biedroń
told onet.pl
That distance from
the country’s two leading parties makes Biedroń something of a
fresh voice in Polish politics. But, for now, he says his political
ambitions are limited to Słupsk.
“In the
parliament, I used to discuss ideology. But as a mayor, I marry
couples, I see people cry. I am there when they get born and die,”
Biedroń said. “I have to be pragmatic.”
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