Forecast for tomorrow
Changes in the Polish politics that took place during last six months are too great to forecast the future from the scratch even for me, although I have been watching after the polititical situation in Poland for years. In order to project the political development of the country I need to analyze the realignment of the Polish political forces once again, estimate their prospects and attempt to figure out what may come out from their competition.
So let’s start from the main political power in Poland for now — right-liberal Civic Platform. One cannot await any particular changes within it. Donald Tusk stadily stands at the helm and the only possible scenario for the internal partisan changes — is the probable outbreak of rivalry between him and Grzegorz Schetyna — current Parliamentary Speaker. Marshal of Seim (or “Marszałek Sejmu” as the Parliament Chair is called in Poland) has long ago brought out his claims for the role of an independent leader and in case of aggravated political competition he may try to play according to his own rules. For now, however, his political weight is a minor value but in a long prospect he may be treated as a Tusk competitor.
SLD[1] is a neo-communist party, hastily ridding itself of the historical trail of PZPR[2] connections. Its current leader Grzegorz Napieralski — who put up quite a decent fight to Bronisław Komorowski and Jarosław Kaczyński at the last presidential elections — still sticks to his policy of party renovation and rejuvenation, having delicately discarded the legacy of Aleksander Kwaśniewski, Leszek Miller and Józef Oleksy. Napieralski fiercely fights for the votes of younger Poles, having sensed the public demand for declericalization of the country.
Grzegorz Napieralski, SLD leader
His predecessors at the post of SLD leader carefully avoided the world-view matters, having, from one hand, tried to keep their traditional socialistic electorate, and from the other hand — having kept friendly relationship with the kościół[3], trying not to frighten off the faithful part of the voters. Their attempts to “kill two birds with one stone” couldn’t have gone on forever and having used the scandalous behavior of Jarosław Kaczyński — which was rejected by the major part of society — Napieralski started to enforce an anti-clerical party policy, having thus appealed the youth, obviously tired from the omnipotence of Catholic Church. Gradual address to such — recently forbidden — topics like taxation of the Church, illegal donations of property and land in favor of kościół, state-financed retirement fund of the Church — became new and yet rather successful direction of SLD left-democratic policy. Just the newly created party of Janusz Palikot may become a natural competitor to SLD — it puts its claims for the very same electoral segment as the left democrats. Tactic that Palikot adopted doesn’t seem to be the best of all — from one hand SLD pushes its elderly functionaries in his direction (the ones, whose reputations has already been “stained” by their assistance to Aleksander Kwaśniewski and Leszek Miller), but, from the other hand, Napieralski makes inviting gestures to Palikot, having offered him a union. However, these old functionaries — like Ryszard Kalisz have the charm of respectability and governing experience. Thus, having come to Palikot, they’d just reinforce his positions. As for the latter, I doubt that being a sensible politician he’d agree for the unification — to me he still appears to be the Civic Platform creation, designed to seize the certain part of the SLD electorate. For now, there was no reason to challenge Palikot’s good sense. After the foundation of his own party he became much more reasonable, respectable and stopped startling his compatriots with the strong statements. Now he’s engaged in a constructive and creative labor of attracting the students, intellectuals and the anti-clerically minded SLD electorate.
PSL[4] is the oldest party of all the contemporary political process participants and it is at the foreground of the Polish politics for now. Historically its roots lie in the end of the 19th century. It was created as the peasants’ party and formally remained one even after more than a hundred-years-long transformation. PSL has the minimal electoral support, swinging around the 5% entering rate for the Seim. Without a clearly formulated program, PSL traditionally features the rural areas support (which is mostly nostalgic) and the backing of certain major land-owners, treating the party as an opportunity to lobby their economic interests. Confused political program, however, is more of a pro to the party rather than a con — it allows it to ally with the various political parties that lack a coalitional partner in order to gain a parliamentary majority, necessary to form the government. So in 1993 and 2001 PSL used to make up a governing coalition along with the SLD and in 2007 it provided Civic Platform with the coalition majority — that allowed party leader Waldemar Pawlak to to became the Deputy Prime Minister in the Donald Tusk government.
Janusz Palikot’s movement appeared merely one and a half months ago and yet managed to cause quite a stir in the Polish media and among political parties. I’ve thoroughly analyzed this new Polish event in the article named “Kaczyński casus”. Since then Palikot managed to achieve quite a number of things. He has even sold his private jet in order to invest the money he made, into creation of the party. Public opinion polls indicate that the new party has all the chances to enter parliament at the 2011 elections. In this case Palikot’s party may ally with the Civic Platform in case PSL would fail to gain the needed 5% of the votes — or to become the third coalition member, along with CP and PSL.
Ryszard Kalisz – possible partner of Palikot
53-years-old Ryszard Kalisz is an old comrade-in-arms for Aleksander Kwaśniewski — once an active functionary of the Socialist Student Union (Polish variant of Communist Union of Youth) — whom Napieralski softly pushed out of the SLD governing body, may become a serious help for Palikot in his fight for the votes of the old party members who may dislike the Napieralski-style SLD rebranding. Fact that Kalisz has a major governing experience is of no small importance as well. He used to head the President’s Chancellery since 1998 to 2000 and in 2000 he also headed the Aleksander Kwaśniewski’s election staff. In 2001 he was elected Chair of Seim Legislation Committee, and then he was a Minister of Internal Affairs in the Marek Belka government. At the parliamentary elections of 2005 Kalisz gained more votes than any of the SLD representatives. Palikot — inexperienced in the state governance — is perfectly aware of the fact that Ryszard Kalisz may be of great use for his party and thus, behind-the-scenes bargaining is still on. Most likely, Kalisz is just willing to receive evidence of the seriousness of Palikot’s chances to enter Seim and as long as he gets such proof — he will join the scandalous politician.
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