“Leftist elites” trying to remove Polish government with western support, warns president

“Liberal-left elites” are trying to remove Poland’s government using people trained by the communist secret services and with support from western Europe, President Andrzej Duda has warned.

Duda, who in July was elected for a second five-year term with the support of the ruling national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, was speaking to a congress of the Gazeta Polska Clubs. These are a network of groups linked to right-wing newspaper Gazeta Polska, which is strongly supportive of PiS.

“We know perfectly well that the elites – most often liberal-leftist, or even with leftist views – are trying at all costs to change the government in Poland,” said the president, quoted by Niezalezna.pl.

After failing to unseat Duda in the presidential election, these elites are now attempting to force early parliamentary elections by trying to “cause social unrest and divisions in the [ruling] camp”, continued the president.

Poland has recently been experiencing its largest protests since the fall of communism in 1989, as hundreds of thousands of people have come onto the street to oppose a constitutional court ruling that introduces a near total ban on abortion.

Polling shows that the protests are backed by the majority of Poles and that support for PiS has dropped significantly. The government has still not published the ruling – which would bring it into force – despite the deadline for doing so passing. There are reportedly splits in the ruling camp over how to proceed.

Duda claimed that the current attempts to unseat the government are supported by wealthy individuals as well as former members of the communist state apparatus.

The government’s successful efforts to clamp down on VAT fraud have harmed “many lucrative interests”, thereby creating enemies, he said. Likewise, its decision to reduce the pensions of former members of the communist-era security services has “aroused enormous rage” among those affected.

“So we are grappling with a very strong movement, people who were often trained for many years by the communist secret services, who are supported – as everyone can see – by various salons from western Europe,” continued Duda. The term “salon” is used in Polish to refer to a gathering of elites.

The aim of these forces is to “change the mentality of people in Poland; they want Poland to stop being a country based on Christian, Catholic values; they want liberal-leftist or even leftist ideology to prevail”, the president concluded.

Kaczyński: “resisting barbaric nihilism”

PiS party chairman Jarosław Kaczyński also addressed the Gazeta Polska Club congress. In a letter, he thanked them for “resisting the vulgar, barbaric nihilism that, on a scale unprecedented in our history, has profaned places of worship and religious symbols, attacked priests, and destroyed our national holiness”.

Kaczyński – who serves as deputy prime minister but is Poland’s de facto leader – was referring to the recent abortion protests, one of whose targets has been the church. Two weeks ago, Kaczyński called on Poles to “defend churches at any cost”, warning that the protesters were seeking “to destroy Poland”.

In fact, although there were some incidents of disruption and vandalism at churches on the first Sunday of the protests, there have subsequently been no such cases.

However, one of the main demands of the organisers of the demonstrations is the creation of a truly secular state, including ending state funding for the church and scrapping Catholic catechism classes in public schools.

Like Duda, Kaczyński also claimed that, “as a camp of loyalty to religious faith and to Poland, we will be attacked from various sides in many ways”. The “greater our success, the more violent the attacks”, he warned.

But, “thanks to the love of faith and of the Fatherland” shown by members of the Gazeta Polska Clubs, “we have put up a dam against this nihilistic madness”, said Kaczyński, quoted by Gazeta.pl.

Gazeta Polska has been strongly supportive of the government’s ideological agenda. Since PiS returned to power in 2015, the newspaper has seen a large increase in the advertising money it receives from state-linked entities.

Last year, as the government embarked on its anti-LGBT campaign, Gazeta Polska distributed free “LGBT-free zone” stickers that it encouraged its readers to put up.

This week, as the Polish government seeks to resist efforts to link European funds to the rule of law, the editor of Gazeta Polska, Tomasz Sakiewicz, appeared on state TV to say that the EU’s plans are part of “Germany implementing its national goal of [creating] Lebensraum” in Poland and the rest of central Europe.

Main image credit: Jakub Szymczuk/KPRP

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.