Poland’s opposition leader Tusk declares win after exit poll shows ruling populists losing majority
by: MONIKA SCISLOWSKA and VANESSA GERA, Associated Press
Updated: Oct 15, 2023 /
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Polish opposition leader Donald Tusk declared the beginning of a new era for his country after opposition parties appeared to have won enough votes in Sunday’s election to oust the ruling populist party.
That party, Law and Justice, has bickered with allies and faced accusations of eroding rule of law at home in its eight years in power. It appeared that voters were mobilized like never before, voting in even greater numbers than when the nation ousted the communist authorities in 1989.
If the result predicted by an exit poll holds, Law and Justice won but also lost. It got more seats than any other party but not enough to build a government and pass laws in the legislature.
The Ipsos exit poll suggested that Law and Justice obtained 200 seats. The far-right Confederation got 12 seats, a showing the party said was a defeat.
It also showed that three opposition parties have likely won a combined 248 seats in the 460-seat lower house of parliament, the Sejm. The largest of the groups is Civic Coalition, led by Tusk, a former prime minister.
“I have been a politician for many years. I’m an athlete. Never in my life have I been so happy about taking seemingly second place. Poland won. Democracy has won. We have removed them from power,” Tusk told his cheering supporters.
“This result might still be better, but already today we can say this is the end of the bad time, this is end of Law and Justice rule,” Tusk added.
Law and Justice leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski acknowledged that the outcome was uncertain for his party. He told supporters at his headquarters that his party’s result, at nearly 37% of the vote, according to the exit poll, was a success, making it the party to win the most votes for three parliamentary elections in a row. But he also acknowledged it might not be able to keep power.
“We must have hope and we must also know that regardless of whether we are in power or in the opposition, we will implement this (political) project in various ways and we will not allow Poland to be betrayed,” Kaczynski said.
If the result holds, and Law and Justice is the single party with the most seats, then it would get the first chance to try to build a government.
It falls to President Andrzej Duda, who is an ally of Law and Justice, to tap a party to try to form a government.
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Polsat News that Duda “will entrust the mission of forming the government to the winning party and in this first step we will certainly try to build a parliamentary majority.”
Three opposition parties, Tusk’s Civic Coalition, Third Way and the New Left, ran on separate tickets but with the same promises of seeking to oust Law and Justice and restore good ties with the European Union.
Wlodzimierz Czarzasty, a leader of the Left party, vowed to work with the others to “create a democratic, strong, reasonable and predictable government.”
Katarzyna Pelczynska-Nalecz, the head of election campaign for Third Way, called it a “huge day for our democracy.”
“There is a lot of work to do for all of us, and it’s going to be a huge challenge,” she said, adding: “we are very satisfied and full of hope that things will be much better in Poland in the days, months and years to come.”
Votes were still being counted and the state electoral commission says it expects to have final results by Tuesday morning.
At stake are the health of the nation’s constitutional order, its legal stance on LGBTQ+ rights and abortion, and the foreign alliances of a country that has been a crucial ally to Ukraine after Russia launched its full-scale invasion.
Law and Justice has eroded checks and balances to gain more control over state institutions, including the courts, public media and the electoral process itself.
During the campaign many Poles described the vote as the most important one since 1989, when a new democracy was born after decades of communism.
Turnout Sunday appeared to be even higher than the 63% of those who voted in 1989 to oust the communists.
“It seems that we have broken a record,” said Sylwester Marciniak, the head of the state electoral commission.
Despite many uncertainties ahead, what appeared certain was that support for the ruling party has shrunk since the last election in 2019 when it won nearly 44% of the vote, its popularity dented by high inflation, allegations of cronyism and bickering with European allies.
If the result holds, it marks a sharp defeat for a ruling party that adopted divisive policies at home, often pushing laws through without trying to build consensus.
Others saw economic threats in the way the party has governed and believe that high social spending has helped to fuel inflation.
There is also a high level of state ownership in the Polish economy, and the governing party has built up a system of patronage, handing out thousands of jobs and contracts to its loyalists.
A political change could open the way for the EU to release billions of euros in funding that has been withheld over what the EU viewed as democratic erosion.
The fate of Poland’s relationship with Ukraine was also at stake. The Confederation party campaigned on an anti-Ukraine message, accusing the country of lacking gratitude to Poland for its help in Russia’s war. Its poor showing will be a relief for Kyiv.
Around 29 million Poles from age 18 were eligible to vote. They chose 460 members of the lower house, or Sejm, and 100 for the Senate for four-year terms.
A referendum on migration, the retirement age and other issues was held simultaneously. Some government opponents called on voters to boycott the referendum.
More than 31,000 voting stations operated across Poland, while there were more than 400 voting stations abroad. In a sign of the emotions generated by the vote, more than 600,000 Poles registered to vote abroad.
Individual parties need to get at least 5% of votes to win seats in parliament, while coalitions need at least 8% of votes.
___
Associated Press journalists Kwiyeon Ha, Pietro De Cristofaro and Rafal Niedzielski contributed to this report.
Poland’s PiS set to lose power, says exit poll
Donald Tusk's Civic Coalition looks like it may have the votes to form a coalition to oust Law and Justice from power. / bne IntelliNews
By Wojciech Kosc in Warsaw October 15, 2023
Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party appeared on the verge of losing power in a razor-edge election, an exit poll showed on October 15.
After a bitter and divisive campaign, Jaroslaw Kaczynski's radical right-wing PiS came in first with 36.8% of the vote, but the opposition parties may be able to put together a majority to oust it from power, the exit poll showed. Donald Tusk's centre-right Civic Coalition scooped 31.6%, with its potential partners the centrist Third Way at 13% and the Left at 8.6%.
"Never in my life have I been as happy as I am today with this second place," an exulted Tusk told reporters.
"This is the end of PiS's rule! This result speaks for itself. No one can take this away from us anymore. We have won democracy. We have won freedom," he added.
In contrast, the reaction from PiS was subdued. "We will do everything to win! Let's wait for further developments now, they can be interesting," said Kaczynski at a no-frills election do at the party's headquarters that lasted just minutes.
But it would take the exit poll to have been very wrong for the results to bring about any surprises now.
"It looks like the opposition can call it," says Ben Stanley, a political scientist with the SWPS University in Warsaw.
"Third Way coming in higher than the polls have been giving them and the Confederation clearly underwhelming were key to the results," Aleks Szczerbiak, a political scientist at the University of Sussex said.
The far-right Confederation – long touted as PiS’ only possible coalition partner – came in at just 6.2%, likely not winning enough seats to help PiS form a new government.
The Civic Coalition is currently expected to win 163 seats in the new parliament. With the Third Way and the Left at 55 and 30, respectively, the opposition has 248 seats, well above the 231-seat minimum required for a majority.
PiS likely won 200 seats while the Confederation won 12.
Turnout was a record 72.9%, 11.5pp more than in the previous vote in 2019, which PiS won.
Should the result stand – the official results are due only in a few days – the election would mark a complete political turnaround in Poland, with big repercussions for Central Europe and the European Union as a whole.
Eight years of the PiS government were characterised by an audacious takeover of state institutions and a prolonged conflict with the European Union over judiciary reforms that Brussels said undermined the rule of law. In PiS’ second term the EU finally began to respond, freezing some vital funding until the party reverses changes that had damaged judicial independence.
Partly in response to this Commission offensive, PiS has pursued an obstructive and destructive policy in the European Council, together with Viktor Orban’s Hungary. This has hampered the EU’s attempts to prepare the bloc to meet the challenges of particularly climate change and growing refugee flows, as well as the reforms and funding needed to cope with a greatly enlarged union in the future.
The opposition’s campaign promised restoration of basic tenets of democratic rule and fixing ties with the EU.
The likely opposition coalition is facing a bumpy ride in the foreseeable future. The new government will not have enough votes to overturn a presidential veto. President Andrzej Duda, a staunch ally of PiS, is expected to throw sand in the new government’s gears in a likely strategy to make it unpopular.
Duda is free to nominate a prime minister and with PiS well short of majority, he is now unlikely to nominate a PiS PM candidate.
"Much depends on whether Duda will want to reposition himself now as someone who the opposition can strike deals with," Stanley says.
The political scientist hints that as the new opposition, PiS now has little to offer Duda in terms of his political life after his second - and final - term ends in 2025.
On the other hand, Stanley adds, "Duda still has some leverage" given the likely new government would not be able to overturn presidential vetoes.
PiS still controls the public media and some key state institutions like the Constitutional Tribunal, though Tusk has indicated he will try to change the composition of their ruling bodies as soon as possible.
A referendum on migration, privatisation, and raising the retirement age - called by PiS to support its campaign for the parliament - also flopped badly. The estimated turnout was just 40% - way off the minimum of 50% plus one vote for the results to stand.
A so-called late poll is expected on Monday. The official results should be known by Wednesday.
Donald Tusk's Civic Coalition looks like it may have the votes to form a coalition to oust Law and Justice from power. / bne IntelliNews
By Wojciech Kosc in Warsaw October 15, 2023
Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party appeared on the verge of losing power in a razor-edge election, an exit poll showed on October 15.
After a bitter and divisive campaign, Jaroslaw Kaczynski's radical right-wing PiS came in first with 36.8% of the vote, but the opposition parties may be able to put together a majority to oust it from power, the exit poll showed. Donald Tusk's centre-right Civic Coalition scooped 31.6%, with its potential partners the centrist Third Way at 13% and the Left at 8.6%.
"Never in my life have I been as happy as I am today with this second place," an exulted Tusk told reporters.
"This is the end of PiS's rule! This result speaks for itself. No one can take this away from us anymore. We have won democracy. We have won freedom," he added.
In contrast, the reaction from PiS was subdued. "We will do everything to win! Let's wait for further developments now, they can be interesting," said Kaczynski at a no-frills election do at the party's headquarters that lasted just minutes.
But it would take the exit poll to have been very wrong for the results to bring about any surprises now.
"It looks like the opposition can call it," says Ben Stanley, a political scientist with the SWPS University in Warsaw.
"Third Way coming in higher than the polls have been giving them and the Confederation clearly underwhelming were key to the results," Aleks Szczerbiak, a political scientist at the University of Sussex said.
The far-right Confederation – long touted as PiS’ only possible coalition partner – came in at just 6.2%, likely not winning enough seats to help PiS form a new government.
The Civic Coalition is currently expected to win 163 seats in the new parliament. With the Third Way and the Left at 55 and 30, respectively, the opposition has 248 seats, well above the 231-seat minimum required for a majority.
PiS likely won 200 seats while the Confederation won 12.
Turnout was a record 72.9%, 11.5pp more than in the previous vote in 2019, which PiS won.
Should the result stand – the official results are due only in a few days – the election would mark a complete political turnaround in Poland, with big repercussions for Central Europe and the European Union as a whole.
Eight years of the PiS government were characterised by an audacious takeover of state institutions and a prolonged conflict with the European Union over judiciary reforms that Brussels said undermined the rule of law. In PiS’ second term the EU finally began to respond, freezing some vital funding until the party reverses changes that had damaged judicial independence.
Partly in response to this Commission offensive, PiS has pursued an obstructive and destructive policy in the European Council, together with Viktor Orban’s Hungary. This has hampered the EU’s attempts to prepare the bloc to meet the challenges of particularly climate change and growing refugee flows, as well as the reforms and funding needed to cope with a greatly enlarged union in the future.
The opposition’s campaign promised restoration of basic tenets of democratic rule and fixing ties with the EU.
The likely opposition coalition is facing a bumpy ride in the foreseeable future. The new government will not have enough votes to overturn a presidential veto. President Andrzej Duda, a staunch ally of PiS, is expected to throw sand in the new government’s gears in a likely strategy to make it unpopular.
Duda is free to nominate a prime minister and with PiS well short of majority, he is now unlikely to nominate a PiS PM candidate.
"Much depends on whether Duda will want to reposition himself now as someone who the opposition can strike deals with," Stanley says.
The political scientist hints that as the new opposition, PiS now has little to offer Duda in terms of his political life after his second - and final - term ends in 2025.
On the other hand, Stanley adds, "Duda still has some leverage" given the likely new government would not be able to overturn presidential vetoes.
PiS still controls the public media and some key state institutions like the Constitutional Tribunal, though Tusk has indicated he will try to change the composition of their ruling bodies as soon as possible.
A referendum on migration, privatisation, and raising the retirement age - called by PiS to support its campaign for the parliament - also flopped badly. The estimated turnout was just 40% - way off the minimum of 50% plus one vote for the results to stand.
A so-called late poll is expected on Monday. The official results should be known by Wednesday.
Donald Tusk: Poland and democracy have won, we removed PiS from power
TVN24 | TVN24 News in English
15 października 2023,
"Poland has won. Democracy has won. We removed them (PiS) from power," Civic Platform Leader Donald Tusk said after Ipsos released the first exit poll after Sunday's (Oct. 15) parliamentary election. He added that "this result can still be better". "But today we can already say that this is the end of this bad time. This is the end of the PiS government," the former prime minister stressed.
Donald Tusk gave a speech during Civic Coalition's election night on Sunday, after Ipsos published the first exit poll. According to preliminary results, Polish democratic opposition groupings stand a chance to win a combined 248 seats in the parliament.
"We've really made it. I know that our dreams were even more ambitious, but let me tell you: I have never been so happy in my life with this second place," he said.
"Poland has won. Democracy has won. We removed them (PiS) from power."
Donald TuskPAP
Tusk added that 12 months ago no one had believed it was possible. "Just three months ago, we were not certain. Even yesterday, people came to me and asked asking 'can you really do it?' Because we haven't been able to do it for many years," he stressed.
"Listen, everything points to this - and I greet all those thousands of people who are still standing in line at polling stations - this result can still be better," Tusk added.
"But today we can already say that this is the end of this bad time. This is the end of the PiS government. We have won democracy, we have won freedom, we have won our beloved Poland back," Civic Coalition leader said.
"Today, I'm the happiest man on Earth."
Tusk: one of the best days of Polish democracy
"We will be watching this election all night. No one can steal this election from us now," Tusk said.
"I'd like to thank all those who were with us. At first there were hundreds of people, later thousands. And in the finale of this truly wonderful campaign for Poland, there were millions of us, in the streets, at rallies, and at ballot boxes today," the former prime minister added.
TVN24 | TVN24 News in English
15 października 2023,
"Poland has won. Democracy has won. We removed them (PiS) from power," Civic Platform Leader Donald Tusk said after Ipsos released the first exit poll after Sunday's (Oct. 15) parliamentary election. He added that "this result can still be better". "But today we can already say that this is the end of this bad time. This is the end of the PiS government," the former prime minister stressed.
Donald Tusk gave a speech during Civic Coalition's election night on Sunday, after Ipsos published the first exit poll. According to preliminary results, Polish democratic opposition groupings stand a chance to win a combined 248 seats in the parliament.
"We've really made it. I know that our dreams were even more ambitious, but let me tell you: I have never been so happy in my life with this second place," he said.
"Poland has won. Democracy has won. We removed them (PiS) from power."
Donald TuskPAP
Tusk added that 12 months ago no one had believed it was possible. "Just three months ago, we were not certain. Even yesterday, people came to me and asked asking 'can you really do it?' Because we haven't been able to do it for many years," he stressed.
"Listen, everything points to this - and I greet all those thousands of people who are still standing in line at polling stations - this result can still be better," Tusk added.
"But today we can already say that this is the end of this bad time. This is the end of the PiS government. We have won democracy, we have won freedom, we have won our beloved Poland back," Civic Coalition leader said.
"Today, I'm the happiest man on Earth."
Tusk: one of the best days of Polish democracy
"We will be watching this election all night. No one can steal this election from us now," Tusk said.
"I'd like to thank all those who were with us. At first there were hundreds of people, later thousands. And in the finale of this truly wonderful campaign for Poland, there were millions of us, in the streets, at rallies, and at ballot boxes today," the former prime minister added.
New film shows Poles some harsh truths as election campaign ahead of Sunday's polls turning increasingly vitriolic
Jo Harper |14.10.2023 -
Polish Director Agnieszka Holland
WARSAW
Polish film director Agnieszka Holland said her new film, The Green Border, which shows non-European migrants’ experiences on the Polish-Belarusian border, is helping to treat Poles with historical trauma.
“When I had a meeting with an audience in Poland, not only were the people crying and giving standing ovations, but the conversations afterwards were a bit like collective psychotherapy,” she said. “I didn’t expect that the reaction of the audience could be so high, that people could be shaken and moved by the film and at the same time elevated.”
Ahead of Sunday's pivotal parliamentary elections, the film has become part of a divisive and ugly election campaign.
While she has been backed by the Federation of European Screen Directors after harsh government reactions and got the Special Jury Prize for the film at the Venice Film Festival, Holland was forced to take on 24-hour security protection when in Poland for the film's Sept. 22 release,
“There could always be some dangerous person who takes the propaganda to heart. In fact, the only person who did come at me was a local politician in Bialystok,” she said.
A nuanced picture
Holland’s two-and-a-half-hour black and white film is divided into several sections, each looking at the crisis from a different angle.
We see a Syrian family led by parents Amina and Bashir and an Afghani teacher, Leila, who joins them at the border. The second section follows one of the guards, Jan, whose pregnant wife sees a viral video in which he beats refugees. In the third, we see Julia, a Polish woman who rescues Leila from a swamp behind her house.
Minsk to blame?
After Belarus opened its borders in late 2021 to migrants and refugees wanting to cross into the EU, thousands of men, women and children made the dangerous crossing into Poland.
Human Rights Watch accuses Belarusian authorities of manufacturing the crisis. There have been reports of migrants being given planks to cross rivers and taxis carrying ladders to straddle the 5-meter (15-foot) fence.
But, as Amnesty said, there are people who have been subjected to violence on the Polish side as well. Locals who try to help are also often followed by soldiers and their homes searched and some activists from the volunteer group, Grupa Granica, have been detained for allegedly helping migrants cross the border into Poland.
Official figures said more than 50 people have died in swamps and bogs since September 2021, though migrant groups said the real number is much higher.
Government attacks
The film touched a raw nerve with Poland’s ruling right-wing, anti-immigrant coalition government.
The Polish government led by the Law and Justice (PiS) party has since 2015 opposed all migrant entry into the EU. When the first wave of refugees came over the Belarus border in August 2021, the government talked of refugees from outside Europe as “dirty” and “disease-ridden,” and spoke of “terrorists,” “sexual perverts” and “criminals” crossing the border.
President Andrzej Duda in a televised interview repeated the WWII slogan” “Only pigs sit in the cinema,” used to refer to Poles who frequented cinemas during Nazi wartime occupation.
Poland’s government has said it will broadcast a “special clip” in cinemas before screenings of the film to inform viewers of its “many untruths and distortions.”
“Those who make such films and who support them, those who receive them well, are essentially Putin's army,” said PiS president Jaroslaw Kaczynski.
"This is a lampoon, a disgusting, disgusting lampoon," he said.
According to Kaczynski, Holland fits into the history of “her community … an environment that comes from the Polish communist party, from people who served Stalin, who was exactly the same genocide as Hitler," he said. Holland is the grandchild of Holocaust victims.
"The same tone we experienced in 1968, when Poland's remaining Jews were forced to leave the country, is there in what he says," said Holland.
The nationalist Polish association of communism and secular Jews, both before, during and since the end of communism in 1989, is a familiar and often used rhetorical device that places Holland within a milieu -- a “community” -- that is effectively, by virtue of its ethnicity, claimed to be anti-Polish.
“Polish services have been successfully defending the border against illegal immigrants sent by Lukashenko and Putin, storming it for two years. Now they also have to deal with the slanderous theses of the creators of the film,” added Kaczynski.
PiS said the film is a preparation for tearing down the fence on the Belarusian border and pushing Warsaw to agree to the EU’s relocation of refugees.
The party has long attacked those whom it sees as a form of internal dissidence from the patriotic line. It has sued US-Polish historian Jan Gross and others for claims that Poles were complicit or actively engaged in the murder of Jews in WWII.
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki was equally furious. “They show our people as idiots and bastards, Poles as primitives. They are trying to destroy our good name as those who opened their hearts and doors to over two million Ukrainians,” he said.
Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro said he would not withdraw remarks likening Holland to a Nazi propagandist. When Holland threatened to sue him, the minister said it was more important how he is judged by God than by a court. He added that he too had not watched the film.
Working against the opposition?
However, some believe the film may represent a political gift for PiS in a country where nearly 70% of voters evaluate the Border Guard positively.
One of the main slogans of the PiS campaign, “Security,” is associated not only with Russia's aggression in Ukraine, but with strong anti-immigrant rhetoric and the situation on the Polish-Belarusian border combines both threads.
Despite the damage done to the so-called visa scandal, which undermined the main axis of the campaign, PiS has not missed any opportunity to refer to the negative effects of the EU’s open borders policy.
But Holland is not convinced by this line of reasoning. “I think the film was needed. That the people didn’t want to be lost in the narrative that everything is fine and that we can speak only in the narrative of elections,” she said.
“I have the feeling, not solid data, that the opinions of people are shifting from supporting the government to being very skeptical about what they say,” she added.
WARSAW
Polish film director Agnieszka Holland said her new film, The Green Border, which shows non-European migrants’ experiences on the Polish-Belarusian border, is helping to treat Poles with historical trauma.
“When I had a meeting with an audience in Poland, not only were the people crying and giving standing ovations, but the conversations afterwards were a bit like collective psychotherapy,” she said. “I didn’t expect that the reaction of the audience could be so high, that people could be shaken and moved by the film and at the same time elevated.”
Ahead of Sunday's pivotal parliamentary elections, the film has become part of a divisive and ugly election campaign.
While she has been backed by the Federation of European Screen Directors after harsh government reactions and got the Special Jury Prize for the film at the Venice Film Festival, Holland was forced to take on 24-hour security protection when in Poland for the film's Sept. 22 release,
“There could always be some dangerous person who takes the propaganda to heart. In fact, the only person who did come at me was a local politician in Bialystok,” she said.
A nuanced picture
Holland’s two-and-a-half-hour black and white film is divided into several sections, each looking at the crisis from a different angle.
We see a Syrian family led by parents Amina and Bashir and an Afghani teacher, Leila, who joins them at the border. The second section follows one of the guards, Jan, whose pregnant wife sees a viral video in which he beats refugees. In the third, we see Julia, a Polish woman who rescues Leila from a swamp behind her house.
Minsk to blame?
After Belarus opened its borders in late 2021 to migrants and refugees wanting to cross into the EU, thousands of men, women and children made the dangerous crossing into Poland.
Human Rights Watch accuses Belarusian authorities of manufacturing the crisis. There have been reports of migrants being given planks to cross rivers and taxis carrying ladders to straddle the 5-meter (15-foot) fence.
But, as Amnesty said, there are people who have been subjected to violence on the Polish side as well. Locals who try to help are also often followed by soldiers and their homes searched and some activists from the volunteer group, Grupa Granica, have been detained for allegedly helping migrants cross the border into Poland.
Official figures said more than 50 people have died in swamps and bogs since September 2021, though migrant groups said the real number is much higher.
Government attacks
The film touched a raw nerve with Poland’s ruling right-wing, anti-immigrant coalition government.
The Polish government led by the Law and Justice (PiS) party has since 2015 opposed all migrant entry into the EU. When the first wave of refugees came over the Belarus border in August 2021, the government talked of refugees from outside Europe as “dirty” and “disease-ridden,” and spoke of “terrorists,” “sexual perverts” and “criminals” crossing the border.
President Andrzej Duda in a televised interview repeated the WWII slogan” “Only pigs sit in the cinema,” used to refer to Poles who frequented cinemas during Nazi wartime occupation.
Poland’s government has said it will broadcast a “special clip” in cinemas before screenings of the film to inform viewers of its “many untruths and distortions.”
“Those who make such films and who support them, those who receive them well, are essentially Putin's army,” said PiS president Jaroslaw Kaczynski.
"This is a lampoon, a disgusting, disgusting lampoon," he said.
According to Kaczynski, Holland fits into the history of “her community … an environment that comes from the Polish communist party, from people who served Stalin, who was exactly the same genocide as Hitler," he said. Holland is the grandchild of Holocaust victims.
"The same tone we experienced in 1968, when Poland's remaining Jews were forced to leave the country, is there in what he says," said Holland.
The nationalist Polish association of communism and secular Jews, both before, during and since the end of communism in 1989, is a familiar and often used rhetorical device that places Holland within a milieu -- a “community” -- that is effectively, by virtue of its ethnicity, claimed to be anti-Polish.
“Polish services have been successfully defending the border against illegal immigrants sent by Lukashenko and Putin, storming it for two years. Now they also have to deal with the slanderous theses of the creators of the film,” added Kaczynski.
PiS said the film is a preparation for tearing down the fence on the Belarusian border and pushing Warsaw to agree to the EU’s relocation of refugees.
The party has long attacked those whom it sees as a form of internal dissidence from the patriotic line. It has sued US-Polish historian Jan Gross and others for claims that Poles were complicit or actively engaged in the murder of Jews in WWII.
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki was equally furious. “They show our people as idiots and bastards, Poles as primitives. They are trying to destroy our good name as those who opened their hearts and doors to over two million Ukrainians,” he said.
Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro said he would not withdraw remarks likening Holland to a Nazi propagandist. When Holland threatened to sue him, the minister said it was more important how he is judged by God than by a court. He added that he too had not watched the film.
Working against the opposition?
However, some believe the film may represent a political gift for PiS in a country where nearly 70% of voters evaluate the Border Guard positively.
One of the main slogans of the PiS campaign, “Security,” is associated not only with Russia's aggression in Ukraine, but with strong anti-immigrant rhetoric and the situation on the Polish-Belarusian border combines both threads.
Despite the damage done to the so-called visa scandal, which undermined the main axis of the campaign, PiS has not missed any opportunity to refer to the negative effects of the EU’s open borders policy.
But Holland is not convinced by this line of reasoning. “I think the film was needed. That the people didn’t want to be lost in the narrative that everything is fine and that we can speak only in the narrative of elections,” she said.
“I have the feeling, not solid data, that the opinions of people are shifting from supporting the government to being very skeptical about what they say,” she added.
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