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Donald Tusk returned to Polish politics on Saturday, in an attempt to revive the fortunes of the struggling opposition and dethrone the Conservative-nationalist legislative and justice party.
Poland will have to hold parliamentary elections no later than 2023 and Tusk, who He resigned as Polish prime minister in 2014 to become president of the European Council, he said he would once again lead the Civic Platform, the center-right party he co-founded two decades ago, to victory.
“I’m back 100%,” Tusk said at a party meeting Saturday. “My belief [is] that the Civic Platform is needed, not as a flashback, but as a force to defeat Law and Justice in the battle of the future. “
Under Tusk’s leadership, the Civic Platform became the dominant force in Polish politics, winning elections in 2007 and 2011, the first time since the collapse of communism that an incumbent government had won re-election.
But his fortune was dwindling when he changed Warsaw for Brussels in 2014, with the party undermined by a scandal about secret recordings of comments by some of his most prominent figures and accused of having lost sight of the concerns of the less affluent Poles.
In the intervening years, Law and Justice, led by Tusk’s rival archivist Jaroslaw Kaczynski, has won a number of local, national and European groups. elections, thanks in part to generous welfare policies, including its insignia child benefit program, a higher one minimum wage, and more money for pensioners.
But it has also established Warsaw in a collision course with Brussels, pushing for judicial changes that the European Commission considers fundamental. threat to the rule of law, pressing independent media and resorting to attacks on the LGBT movement to dismiss their voters.
In recent months, law and justice, which rules in coalition with two smaller groups, have been torn apart. internal struggles between its moderate and hard wings. Last week, three MPs marched to form their own group, depriving the coalition of its formal parliamentary majority, although analysts say it may still be able to rally majorities in key votes.
In his speech at the Civic Platform meeting, during which he replaced Borys Budka as acting party leader, Tusk pointed to the record of Law and Justice, accusing him of being evil and of favoring the goal of the Russian President Vladimir Putin to divide Europe through his clashes. with Brussels.
“The evil that law and justice do is so obvious, it’s so shameless, so permanent that it happens in almost every matter,” he said. “Minority contempt, brutal and vulgar authoritarian tendencies, aversion to all kinds of freedom. . . Permanent attacks on the EU. That’s Putin’s agenda, one by one. “
Despite Law and Justice’s clashes with Brussels and tension in the ruling camp, Tusk faces an upward task to revive the fortune of the Civic Platform. Support for the party has dropped to 16% in recent polls, leaving it behind Law and Justice and Poland 2050, Szymon Holownia’s new centrist party.
There is also a generational division in the Civic Platform. Rafal Trzaskowski, the popular mayor of Warsaw, who ran as the Civic Platform candidate last year presidential elections, made it clear earlier this week that he was willing to run against Tusk for party leadership, if it were to hold internal elections.
“I think Tusk will be able to return to the civic platform at 20% more in the polls, and I think that will happen quickly, which will give him something to build,” said Wojciech Szacki, a political expert at Polityka Insight, a Warsaw-based think tank.
“But I don’t think there will be enough to advance the law and justice at the polls. I think there’s a roof over Tusk’s head. Poland has changed since he left. A lot of people don’t like what the Civic Platform did when it was in power, and others don’t remember it. “
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