by HOLGER POLITT
In Poland a new state president will be elected on 18 May 2025 when voters are called to the first round. It is not expected that the first round will decide the outcome since the winner has to gather more than 50% of votes behind him, which now looks impossible. This will lead to a runoff 14 days later between the two candidates who place best in the first round. Polls show that three candidates have reasonable chances to enter the final round: Rafa? Trzaskowski, Karol Nawrocki and S?awomir Mentzen.
Trzaskowski: Support from the liberal centre – rapprochement with the conservatives
Polls show Rafa? Trzaskowski (born 1972), the mayor of Warsaw, with a big lead. As the candidate of Donald Tusk’s politically and substantively wide-ranging, though essentially liberal-conservative, bloc, he can count on a good 35% of votes, according to the polls. Trzaskowski already brings to the race plenty of experience from the electoral campaign for the country’s highest office – in early summer of 2020 he gave Andrzej Duda (born 1972), the national-conservative incumbent, an exciting run for his money. Now, after two terms Duda cannot run again. Five years ago both candidates got more than 10 million voters in the runoff, an unusually high participation – moreover under pandemic conditions. The race was closely decided only at the finishing line in favour of Duda. The result emphatically demonstrated how divided Poland’s political life has become ever since the rise to power of the national conservatives. Up to now little has changed in this regard. The entire liberal and more left parts of the spectrum have stood behind Trzaskowski. The national conservatives around Jaros?aw Kaczy?ski and their government had early set the stage for a type of culture war, with the influential Catholic church eager to second them. A rigid, aggressive stance was adopted in the area of women’s rights and the rights of sexual minorities, which blossomed in the 2020 presidential electoral campaign. The liberal to left capital city was demonised, depicting Trzaslowski as its representative – peaking in the nonsensical accusation that if he won, he would try to reintroduce “communism”. For Trzaskowski the choice was obvious – he positioned himself as recognisably left liberal, in order to lend a unifying voice to the broad spectrum of Kaczy?ski opponents – from moderate conservatives to left. It is striking this year that in his campaign appearances Trzaskowski has shifted to a liberal-conservative milieu in the belief that this will attract decisive votes in the runoff.
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