President-elect Karol Nawrocki. Photo: Monika Bryk

The right’s victory is not only the defeat of the liberal candidate, Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski’s — it’s a political blockade for progressive changes until the end of the decade. Women, LGBT+ individuals and left-wing circles have ultimately lost their chances for civil partnerships, the right to abortion and a secular state.

Five years ago, hundreds of thousands of women took to the streets in protest against the [restrictive abortion rulings of Julia Przyłębska [President of the Constitutional Tribunal under PiS rule]. It seemed that something had cracked in the country, that space had opened up for progressive change. Today it’s clear that if that uprising ever had a chance for political articulation, it was squandered. After Nawrocki’s victory, everything indicates that the changes fought for then may come at the earliest in 2030 — if at all.

For progressive voters, Nawrocki’s victory means applying an alt-right, if not outright reactionary, brake. For the next five years, there’s no point counting on civil partnerships, legal abortion or statutory changes leading to a secular state.

Of course, one could cynically ask what difference it makes, since the current Sejm [lower house of the Polish parliament] wasn’t able to pass them anyway, blocked by the conservative anchor of the governmental majority in the form of PSL [Polish People’s Party - a centrist agrarian party [..] Trzaskowski at least gave a theoretical chance that something might change for the better for women or the LGBT+ community this decade. Nawrocki’s victory definitively closes that possibility.

What’s more, looking at how much the political scene has shifted to the right this year, Donald Tusk [leader of Civic Platform (KO) and current Prime Minister] might conclude that Trzaskowski lost because he was too left-wing and progressive for Polish conditions. After all, presidential elections in Poland have always been won by conservatives, with the double exception of [post-communist Aleksander] Kwaśniewski [president 1995-2005]. The only president from Civic Platform— Bronisław Komorowski — represented the party’s right wing, and today clearly suggests that the Platform has shifted so far left that he no longer finds himself in it. If the Platform decides that the growing right must be outflanked from the right flank — as it did earlier with migration — the space for left-wing policies in government will shrink even further.

If, as part of the idea of moving right, the government turns in a neoliberal direction, seeking votes of Konfederacja [Confederation - a far-right libertarian party] for laws rejected by the left — and thus testing the ground for a possible future coalition — one cannot rule out that Nawrocki will apply his veto, protecting certain interests of poorer voters. The problem is that such vetoes will play politically only in favour of PiS [Law and Justice - the main right-wing party], making it even more difficult for even the most anti-government left to reach this group of electorate.

The Left Must Already Think About What’s Next

Trzaskowski’s victory would have given respite not only to Civic Coalition, but to the entire governmental majority. It would have revived the faith of its voters, including left-wing ones, in the sense of remaining in a difficult and often frustrating coalition. Nawrocki, most likely playing for paralysis of the government’s work, with whom the left will find it much harder to reach agreement than with Duda [Andrzej Duda, the outgoing president, PiS], completely changes the strategic situation of the governmental left.

It must now seriously consider the boundary conditions for remaining in the current arrangement, because one can expect it will continue to lose support, for which the smaller coalition partners will pay a higher price than the hegemonic Civic Coalition. This is the moment when one should prepare, as a last resort, even for the option of leaving the table — though in such a way that it would be clear and understandable to voters, that it would refer to their values and interests.

It’s very possible that parliamentary elections await us as early as next year, if the two main centres of the duopoly decide it’s the only way to deal with the blockage on the Presidential Palace – Sejm line. Much sooner than probably anyone on the left assumed, one will therefore have to answer the question whether to bet on one list [against the right] or on a separate start [for the left].

Without Safety Measures

At the same time, Nawrocki’s victory opens the path to a future coalition of PiS and Konfederacja. PiS is condemned to this coalition partner. No matter how far left the left might go in alt-left, [PiS leader Jarosław] Kaczyński will never bet on such an alliance, having on his right side a young, dynamic party that imposes the language, way of thinking and topics on a large part of his own formation.

Perhaps, however, a PiS–Konfederacja coalition was awaiting us anyway, considering the social dynamics and the current majority’s inability to deliver projects important to voters. Still, Trzaskowski’s victory would at least have applied the brakes to such a coalition and guaranteed blocking its most anti-progressive ideas.

In the near future, we face the prospect of rule by a right much more radical than that of 2015–23. And without safety measures, because after the years of PiS rule Poland don’t have a functioning constitutional judiciary. One can expect far-reaching changes in the spirit of Ordo Iuris [a conservative Catholic legal organisation], politics using state tools to actively promote or even impose conservative values, ideologies and lifestyles on society. Perhaps combined with actions in the style of Viktor Orbán, [Hungarian Prime Minister] aimed at the possibility of free operation of media, NGOs, and cultural institutions viewed unfavourably by the government.

It’s hard to imagine Nawrocki blocking the authoritarian impulses of a right-wing coalition in this matter. I don’t see him either in the role of guardian of PiS’s social legacy from the first term of Beata Szydło’s government [Prime Minister 2015-2017]. If a new PiS–Konfederacja government makes decisions about a neoliberal turn, then Nawrocki will certainly not block it.

For many groups associated with the left, life in Poland will soon become much more stifling, claustrophobic, and artistic or academic freedom will shrink. And even a strong opposition left-wing party in the next Sejm — though it’s important that it finds itself there — won’t change much in the country.

All this in the context of a global right-wing populist backlash. For over a decade, when PiS first took the electoral double [winning both presidential and parliamentary elections], in the era of Brexit and Trump, the left and liberals repeated that hard times were coming. But we may yet long for the hard times from the era of PiS’s previous hegemony, when Rafał Trzaskowski was losing for the first time.

Jakub Majmurek