Janusz Palikot in Bydgoszcz June 2013. Wikimedia/public domain.
The rise and fall of Mr Palikot
The Polish left is in deep crisis. For the last decade the political scene has been dominated by the centrist Civic Platform (PO), currently the main governing party, and the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, the main opposition grouping. Although it remains the main party on the left, the once-powerful communist successor Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), which governed the country from 1993-97 and 2001-5, has been in the doldrums since its support collapsed in the 2005 parliamentary election, following a series of spectacular high level corruption scandals. At the most recent 2011 parliamentary poll the party suffered its worst ever defeat slumping to fifth place with only 8% of the vote.
At the same time, a centre-left challenger emerged in the form of the anti-clerical liberal Palikot Movement (RP), created at the end of 2010 by Janusz Palikot, a controversial and flamboyant businessman and one-time Civic Platform parliamentarian, which came from nowhere to finish third in the 2011 election with just over 10% of the vote. However, Mr Palikot’s party failed to capitalise on its success, struggling with its political identity and finding it difficult to decide whether it was really a left-wing party at all or more of an economically and socially liberal centrist grouping.
