[NEWS] Poland celebrates the first EU presidential elections in times of pandemic

[YaKuZa--BoSs]

The elections were scheduled for May 10, but the opposition called for a boycott as measures against Covid-19 made a campaign impossible

 

 

Poland holds presidential elections this Sunday with the prospect of a second round between the current president, the ultra-conservative Andrzej Duda, and the mayor of Warsaw, Rafal Trzaskowski, in whom the liberal opposition to the Ley y Justica (PiS) party has put their hopes for break the hegemony that the formation of Jaroslaw Kaczynski has in the three powers of the State.

The latest polls risk Duda 41% of the votes and 26% Trzaskowski. In a second round, the first would get 48.6% and the second 47.5%.

Forecasts were quite different in May, on the eve of an election that the opposition group boycotted as the country was subject to strong restrictions due to the coronavirus. Duda had then secured the majority in the first round. Of the 11 candidates in the running, the second best positioned was the liberal Malgorzata Kidawa-Blonska, with 3.5%. The opposition has meanwhile changed its candidate. She has replaced Kidawa-Blonska with the mayor of Warsaw. For PiS, which tried to avoid that change, Trzaskowski is a serious threat. In the last municipal elections, the capital was taken from them.

"You can see that President Duda is nervous. He was counting on the win. He thought he already had it in his hands. The circumstances are now quite different," says Wojciech Przybylski, editor-in-chief of 'Visegrad Insight.'

PRESENTIAL AND MAIL VOTING
Duda's closeness to the PiS has turned Trzaskowski into a double-edged sword as an opponent. The mayor has managed to turn the successes of the government's management into a pandemic, which Duda claimed, into black shadows.

Trzaskowski is young, has studied at Oxford and Paris and speaks five languages, including Spanish. He was MEP from 2009 to 2013, Minister of Administration and Digitization during the second term of Donald Tusk and Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs. The LGTBI collective has adopted him as a candidate, in the midst of a polarized campaign around his rights.

Voting will be conducted in person and by mail to minimize the risk of a Covid-19 outbreak, which could delay the scrutiny and announcement of results.

The ballot box will be cast under strict security measures. The responsibility for compliance with the measures against the pandemic falls on the head of each electoral commission, as Health Minister Lukasz Szumowski recalled on Friday in a radio intervention in which he urged citizens to take precautions.

LITTLE IMPACT OF THE CORONAVIRUS
With just 33,395 confirmed cases and 1,429 deaths, according to data provided by the government on Friday, Poland has been little affected by Covid-19 compared to other European countries, and will be the first in the EU to hold presidential elections. in times of pandemic. Duda's term ends in August.

Regardless of who wins the duel for the Head of State, these elections will go down in history as one of the most convoluted of Polish democracy. They were scheduled for May 10, but the opposition called for a boycott as measures against Covid-19 made a campaign impossible. The PiS then launched a vote entirely by mail, which was also answered.

A last-minute agreement between PiS and its coalition partner allowed the situation to be unblocked. The date of the vote was allowed to pass so that the Supreme Court declared the elections simply invalid. A month and a half later, Parliament Speaker Elzbieta Witek announced that the elections would be held on June 28. The PiS had given way. The Lower House, where the government formation has a majority, approved the amendments to the Electoral Law presented by the opposition. The voting system would be mixed and the responsibility for the organization of the elections would be in the hands of the Electoral Board and not of the Post Office as the Government intended.

"The PiS has polarized so much with these elections that we are facing a plebiscite to the government," says political scientist Antoni Dudek.