A senior figure in Poland’s main opposition party, Civic Platform (PO), has today defected to a rival group. Her departure follows that of a senator earlier this week.
Following media speculation earlier in the day, this afternoon Joanna Mucha – an MP and former minister who last year stood to be party leader – confirmed at a press conference that she was quitting PO and joining Poland 2050 (Polska 2050), another centrist group, whose leader Szymon Hołownia appeared alongside her.
Mucha’s defection follows a similar decision earlier this week by Jacek Bury, an independent senator who had previously caucused with PO but decided to instead align himself with Poland 2050.
Whereas Mucha, who has been a member of PO since 2003 and has served as an MP since 2007, was today diplomatic about her departure, saying that she and the party had taken “different paths” and “nobody is to blame”, Bury was far more scathing in his remarks.
Speaking to Interia, he said that PO no longer knows what it stands for. “Can anyone say if PO has a programme? After a year of being in their caucus I don’t see [one],” he said. He accused the party of focusing simply on criticising the government rather than offering a constructive alternative.
Mucha, who served as sports minister from 2011 to 2013, expressed a similar sentiment, saying that PO have “become stuck in a deadlock with PiS”, the ruling party, whereas she “dreams about a Poland of the future, a Poland after PiS”.
Bury predicted that other politicians will also defect from PO, although he said that the real “exodus” would likely only come in 2023, ahead of parliamentary elections that year, when people see the party’s poor polling numbers.
Senator @jacek_bury w rozmowie z @L_Szpyrka
"Przed wyborami za 2,5 roku, kiedy PO nie będzie miała dobrych notowań, a nie będzie ich miała, nastąpi exodus wielu polityków. 6-9 miesięcy przed wyborami popatrzą na słupki poparcia i zaczną kalkulować"https://t.co/72yl4G6fCo— Interia (@Int_Wydarzenia) January 18, 2021
At today’s conference, Hołownia announced that Mucha and Bury would now form a parliamentary group with Poland 2050’s one other MP, Hanna Gill-Piątek, who defected from Spring (Wiosna), a small liberal party, last year.
Poland 2050 was formed in August following an impressive presidential campaign by Hołownia, a well-known journalist and TV presenter with no previous political experience. In the first round of the presidential election, Hołownia finished third, with 14% of the vote.
Hołownia has presented himself as a moderate and pragmatic conservative: a devout Catholic who strongly believes in the division of church and state and supports same-sex civil partnerships; a proponent of reducing Poland’s reliance on coal and promoting green energy.
He has become the latest in a line of political outsiders to promise to challenge the dominance of PiS and PO, who have alternated in power at the head of governing coalitions since 2005.
Poland 2050 has maintained a strong position in the polls since its formation. Its average level of support this month is 16%, up almost 2 percentage points on December, according to poll aggregator Ewybory.eu.
That is not far behind Civic Coalition (KO), an alliance dominated by PO, which has 20.6%. PiS continues to lead, as it has for the last six years, with support averaging just above 35%.
The latest defections will raise further questions for PO, which has lost six successive elections – parliamentary, presidential and local – to PiS. Since the department of its former prime minister, Donald Tusk, in 2014, the party has struggled to find effective leadership or clear messaging.
PO’s current chief, Borys Budka, took over in January last year, following a contest in which Mucha had also initially stood as a leadership candidate. In last year’s presidential election, PO’s candidate, Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, finished runner-up to the PiS-backed incumbent, Andrzej Duda.
An unnamed senior PO figure told Gazeta Wyborcza that Mucha’s departure, which had not been expected, “will be a blow for us”.
Main image credit: Jakub Orzechowski / Agencja Gazeta
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.
