The PiS party (Prawo i Sprawedliwosc, or 'law and justice') in power in Poland is worried. To be sure, 'its' candidate, Andrzej Duda, won the second round of the presidential election on Sunday. He did so by whisker, however, leaving a country evenly divided between PiS’s nationalist and conservative message and the Europhilic and 'progressive' message of Duda’s opponent, Rafal Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw.
Of course, it would have been worse for PiS if Trzaskwski had won. The President of Poland does not have many powers but he can veto and delay legislation and he can represent Poland abroad, as Duda did recently visiting Donald Trump; this is something Trzaskowski would not have done. He might have been expected to go to Brussels before going to Washington.
But PiS is still worried. It suffered a surprising reversal in losing control of the senate in last year’s parliamentary elections, even though it managed to maintain its majority in the lower house. Above all, PiS sees the writing on the wall. PiS has counted on the support of the Church and the government’s exceedingly generous social programme: a thirteenth monthly salary for retirees, a family allowance scheme that is so popular opposition parties have vowed to maintain it, a doubling of the minimum wage. The country has indicated that it is happy to cash in on such goodies but it is also ready for a change. Rural Poland may remain faithful to PiS but the larger cities, the future of the country, have shown once again that they will have no truck with the government’s nationalist and socially conservative message.
