Skeletons
in Nawrocki’s closet fail to dent his Polish presidential bid
The populist
right-winger even appears to be turning accusations from liberal politicians
and media to his advantage ahead of Sunday’s vote.
Karol
Nawrocki's campaign in fact shows no signs of buckling under the accusations. |
May 30, 2025
4:01 am CET
By Wojciech
Kość
WARSAW —
Numerous skeletons have tumbled out of Karol Nawrocki’s closet during Poland’s
presidential election campaign, but the increasingly lurid accusations about
his past aren’t harming his chances — and may even help the populist
right-winger win Sunday’s nail-biter contest.
The
political temperature is boiling in the final stretch of the race. Donald Tusk,
Poland’s pro-EU center-right prime minister, has accused the nationalist Law
and Justice (PiS) opposition party of backing Nawrocki’s presidential bid
despite knowing of his links to gangsters and prostitution. The candidate
himself is also suggesting he took part in pitched battles of football
hooligans, playing up his skills as a boxer.
It’s been a
sensational escalation from the somewhat surreal accusations against Nawrocki
in the earlier weeks of the campaign. In March it emerged that he had appeared
on a TV show in disguise, blurred out and using a pseudonym, to promote a book
he had written on organized crime and to praise himself.
Matters took
a more serious turn this month when the circumstances of Nawrocki’s acquisition
of an apartment from an elderly man in the northern city of Gdańsk ignited a
political controversy. But the accusations that he is linked to the underworld
— which Nawrocki has adamantly denied as a media fabrication — have ratcheted
up the debate over his fitness for the presidency.
Polarized
Poles
The big
question is whether any of this is moving the needle in Poland’s highly
polarized society. Just like his political ally U.S. President Donald Trump,
whom he met earlier in the campaign, Nawrocki is proving adept at deflecting
the accusations against him as fantasies and lies from the liberal camp.
Nawrocki’s
campaign in fact shows no signs of buckling under the accusations, and
POLITICO’s Poll of Polls puts the contest on a knife edge, with Nawrocki
polling only one percentage point behind his rival, liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafał
Trzaskowski.
Poland is an
important player in the EU and NATO, and the high-stakes election is being
closely watched as a signal about the country’s trajectory. A win for
Trzaskowski would allow Tusk to steer Warsaw back to the heart of the EU
mainstream, whereas Nawrocki as president would be able to scupper much of
Tusk’s reformist agenda.
Nawrocki is
drawing parallels between himself and Trump as he hits back against his
critics. “Media slander did not destroy President Trump. It will not destroy
Karol Nawrocki, either,” he said on his campaign’s X account Wednesday. In
addition to meeting Trump, the PiS-backed presidential candidate was also a
speaker at MAGA’s CPAC conference in Poland, held Tuesday in the southeastern
town of Jasionka.
And just
like Trump, Nawrocki has a solid base that is impervious to much of the noise
about his past.
“In a deeply
polarized society, anything is possible and that is the most fitting answer as
to why this is happening,” said Anna Siewierska-Chmaj, a political scientist
from the University of Rzeszów.
“These
scandals may have actually helped Nawrocki since PiS abandoned the narrative of
[his] being a ‘citizens’ candidate’ and closed ranks behind him as a de facto
party candidate. This has put the unconvinced PiS voters firmly behind
Nawrocki.”
Pulling no
punches
Tusk has
pulled no punches in combatting Nawrocki, accusing PiS leader Jarosław
Kaczyński of backing an unsuitable candidate. “You knew about everything,
Jarosław. About the connections with the gangsters, about ‘arranging for girls’
… about the apartment fraud and other matters still hidden. The entire
responsibility for this catastrophe falls on you!” he wrote on X.
The most
serious accusations stem from testimony provided to Polish online portal Onet
that Nawrocki had secured prostitutes at a luxury hotel on the Baltic Sea,
where he was working for security. A member of parliament from Tusk’s party
then appeared on television to vouch for the report. “I have knowledge that all
the information presented … in the Onet article is simply true,” said Agnieszka
Pomaska, who represents Gdańsk, the city on the Baltic Sea where the alleged
offences took place.
Nawrocki
emphatically denies the accusations, says he will sue Onet over the report, and
is hitting back hard against Tusk and Trzaskowski. “Today in Poland the problem
is political prostitution, which wants to give Poland away for foreign money …
Media assistants of Tusk and Trzaskowski will not take away our victory!” he
wrote on X.
Conversely,
when it comes to suggestions he was involved in mass brawls involving as many
as 140 football hooligans, far from pushing back Nawrocki has embraced the
notion, playing up his pedigree as a boxer and saying he took part in
“sporting, noble fights.”
Another
allegation emerged in a report by Gazeta Wyborcza, a major liberal newspaper,
over Nawrocki’s security clearance — something he needed for his job as the
head of the Institute of National Remembrance, a state agency tracking Nazi and
Communist crimes against Poles.
The report
claimed that Nawrocki’s assessment by the ABW counterintelligence agency was
initially negative until the agency’s then-chief — now an aide to outgoing
President Andrzej Duda — overrode it.
Nawrocki’s
campaign team had no response to the security clearance issue when contacted by
POLITICO.
But the
election campaign attacks haven’t all been levelled at Nawrocki. PiS has also
tried to undermine Trzaskowski, more recently by suggesting he is refusing to
undergo drug testing because he has something to hide.
When asked
about that claim on Monday, Trzaskowski replied: “I am surprised that you are
asking this kind of question, because it is Karol Nawrocki who clearly has a
problem. It is like when someone has a car accident — they should examine
themselves, not ask others to do it.”
PiS also
said Wednesday that Trzaskowski could be implicated in a complex “garbage
scandal” that has festered for years at Warsaw town hall.
Poland’s
National Prosecutor’s Office said it had charged 17 people — some close to
municipal government in the capital — with corruption involving fake invoices
related to the rental of waste management equipment.
Trzaskowski,
who has been mayor of Warsaw since 2018, has long denied any role and sued a
PiS-linked newspaper over such allegations two years ago.
Tied to Tusk
PiS’s main
strategy has been to associate Trzaskowski with Tusk’s government, whose
popularity is waning.
An April
poll by Opinia24 for private broadcaster Radio Zet showed 51 percent of Poles
giving the government a negative assessment less than two years after it took
power. Only 39 percent of respondents said they were happy with the Tusk
administration.
Monthly
surveys gauging the mood in Poland showed supporters of the government at 34
percent of respondents in April, compared to 40 percent opposed.
“In the
final stretch of the election campaign … Donald Tusk is making it clear that he
wants to install his puppet in the presidential palace,” Andrzej Śliwka, a
member of parliament for PiS and an aide to Nawrocki’s campaign, told a press
conference Wednesday.
“Rafał
Trzaskowski is Donald Tusk’s puppet, and Tusk wants a politician … who will be
completely subservient to him. That is why Tusk will stop at nothing.”
Siewierska-Chmaj
fears the more feverish the campaign becomes, the greater the risk of an
explosive backlash.
“I would say
we’re already at a point where this threatens to erupt — even, I would go so
far as to say, into acts of violence. The level of polarization and mutual
animosity is starting to translate into real aggression, and it’s becoming
increasingly clear,” she said.
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