FORUM
Polish
clash: Should Tusk stay or go
The
ruling party calculates whether to back the Pole for a second term as
European Council president.
By NORBERT
MALISZEWSKI 4/27/16, 5:32 AM CET
WARSAW — Most
countries would be thrilled that a native son is the head of a
powerful institution like the European Council and try to keep him
there as long as possible. Not Poland.
The prospect of
another two-and-a-half-year term for Donald Tusk as Council president
is creating a tricky political problem for the government in Warsaw.
Tusk is a bitter
enemy of the current Law and Justice party (PiS) currently running
Poland, and it has to make a calculation whether its interests are
better served by Tusk spending a few more years in Brussels, or if it
makes more sense to bring him home early. Warsaw has to figure out if
it will officially back Tusk for another term next spring.
Because Tusk is only
the second person to hold the post of president, there isn’t much
of a tradition to fall back on. The head of the EU’s rotating
presidency — in Tusk’s case Malta, which holds the post in the
first half of next year — is supposed to sound out the rest of the
bloc on who should be nominated.
The president is
then chosen by a qualified majority, although in reality it takes a
consensus among all 28 member countries to get the nod.
Tusk gets little
love from home
Normally, a
candidate is first backed by their home country. In Tusk’s case
that’s up in the air.
“I didn’t have
the backing of PiS, and probably in the future I won’t have the
backing of PiS on any issue,” Tusk said recently when asked if he
could count on the ruling party’s support. “I can live with
that.”
Leading Law and
Justice politicians have made their feelings about Tusk pretty clear.
Opinion polls in
Poland show that Tusk is negatively viewed by 56 percent of those
surveyed while 32 percent see him positively.
Stanisław
Karczewski, speaker of the senate, recently called Tusk a “traitor,”
arguing he bore some of the responsibility for the 2010 airplane
crash that killed President Lech Kaczyński — twin brother of PiS
leader Jarosław Kaczyński — and other senior officials.
All evidence shows
that the crash was a tragic accident, but it has become an article of
faith among the core electorate of PiS that the disaster was a plot,
possibly conceived by Tusk in cahoots with Russian President Vladimir
Putin. A milder version of the theory holds that Tusk is to blame
because the flight to the Russian city of Smolensk was poorly
organized and he was prime minister at the time.
Jarosław Kaczyński
has accused Tusk of trying to eliminate the memory of his brother and
of the air disaster. “It did not succeed. Forgiveness is needed,
but only after pleading guilty and imposing the appropriate
punishment,” he said earlier this month at a ceremony to mark the
anniversary of the crash.
Warsaw weighs its
options
Law and Justice is
weighing two scenarios.
The first is for the
government to deny Tusk a second term. He then returns to Warsaw in
2017, where he could unite fractured opposition parties that have
been very ineffective in trying to block PiS.
The second scenario
assumes Tusk remains in Brussels for a second term until late 2019.
He would return to Poland just ahead of presidential elections set
for the spring of 2020. He’d be a potential candidate against the
PiS-backed incumbent Andrzej Duda, whose support is steadily eroding.
Tusk has had some
friction in his relations with Germany, backing a tougher line
against asylum seekers than Merkel.
Duda is closely
identified with PiS and is seen as following Kaczyński’s commands
— especially in the divisive crisis over the country’s top
constitutional court. If the current atmosphere persists for several
more years, center and center-left voters could turn completely away
from Duda.
That could help Tusk
if he decides to run. Coming back to Poland after five years in one
of Europe’s highest profile jobs and standing against an unpopular
president tied to a controversial ruling party could hand Tusk the
presidency.
The dilemma for PiS
is which scenario is better for the party.
An April opinion
poll by the Adriana organization found that 51 percent of Poles want
the government to back Tusk for another term as Council president,
while 33 were against. That means a decision not to support Tusk
would be opposed by a majority of society, but not by PiS’s core
electorate.
However, there is a
calculation that if Tusk jumps back into national politics next year,
not long after quitting as prime minister in 2014, he may not be
effective. Memories of his eight years in power are still fresh, and
many Poles have mixed feelings about the way his Civic Platform party
governed.
Opinion polls show
that Tusk is negatively viewed by 56 percent of those surveyed while
32 percent see him positively.
Leaving him in
Brussels may work to Tusk’s advantage.
There’s an example
of that dynamic in Poland’s recent political past. Jerzy Buzek left
office in 2001 after a four-year term as prime minister, and at that
time was negatively viewed by many Poles. A long stint in Brussels,
where he served for a time as president of the European Parliament,
has dramatically changed that perception, and he is now one of
Poland’s most respected politicians.
The same dynamic may
apply to Tusk, so PiS is being very careful.
If the government
doesn’t support a Pole for such a senior post it would set a
ground-breaking precedent. For that reason Zbigniew Kuźmiuk, a PiS
MEP, suggested that Prime Minister Beata Szydło is monitoring how
Tusk is doing his job, and will decide to back him if he first gets
the support of France and Germany.
That’s an effort
to minimize any political damage for PiS and to shift responsibility
from Warsaw to Paris and Berlin. If Tusk gets a second term, PiS
could tell its voters that the blame lies with Angela Merkel, and he
could be portrayed inside Poland as a puppet of the German
chancellor.
If, however, he
doesn’t continue as Council head, then he could be tarred with the
responsibility for not doing well enough at his post to gain the
support of France and Germany.
The view from the
rest of the EU
While Warsaw tries
to figure out what to do with Tusk, there are also calculations
taking place in Brussels and other European capitals.
Tusk has had some
friction in his relations with Germany, backing a tougher line
against asylum seekers than Merkel.
There’s also the
internal politics of the EU.
By 2017, Martin
Schulz, a Socialist, will no longer be head of the European
Parliament — which could put all of the bloc’s top offices in the
hands of the European People’s Party, to which both Tusk and
Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker belong. Normally, that would
imply that a Socialist should get Tusk’s job, but the EU may be
content to leave him in place at a time when it is dealing with a
host of crises.
One of those crises
is the EU’s rule of law procedure launched in January against
Poland out of worry that the new government is violating the bloc’s
democratic norms. The procedure won’t be concluded with Poland
losing its Council voting rights because Hungary has promised to
block such a step.
However, Europe’s
elites may want to poke PiS in the eye and keep Tusk around for a
second term.
And that means Tusk
may be in for a second term as Council president not because of
Warsaw but in spite of it.
Maliszewski is a
political scientist at the University of Warsaw.
Authors:
Norbert Maliszewski
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário