Donald Tusk returns to Polish politics pledging to defeat “evil” ruling party

Former prime minister Donald Tusk has announced his return to domestic Polish politics, seven years after leaving to become president of the European Council.

Tusk today took over as acting leader of the centrist Civic Platform (PO), the party he founded 20 years ago but which has, since his departure for Brussels in 2014, lost six elections in a row to the ruling national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) led by Jarosław Kaczyński.

Speaking at a meeting of PO’s national council today, Tusk confirmed recent speculation about his imminent return, declaring that he was “coming back 100%” and intended to “win the fight for the future against PiS”.

“Today, evil rules in Poland, and we are going out onto the field to fight this evil,” declared the 64-year-old. “The evil that PiS has done is so evident, shameless and permanent. It happens every day in every matter.”

At the meeting, the party’s previous leader, Borys Budka, who held the position for only 17 months, submitted his resignation. He said he was “putting the future of the country and the future of PO above my own ambitions”, telling Tusk: “I want you to lead us to victory.”

The council then elected both Tusk and Budka as deputy leaders of the party, but with the former performing the function of acting leader. PO’s spokesman, Jan Grabiec, said that 201 members of the council had voted for Tusk to be deputy leader, with no votes against.

Katarzyna Lubnauer – leader of the liberal Modern (Nowoczesna) party, which is a junior partner in the PO-dominated Civic Coalition (KO) caucus in parliament – welcomed Tusk’s return, saying that he is “good at mobilising the electorate that sees the destructive actions of PiS”.

Amid PO’s struggles in recent years, the potential return of Tusk – who served as prime minister from 2007 to 2014 – has regularly been mooted. In 2019, there was talk of him standing as PO’s candidate in the 2020 presidential elections.

But, with polls indicating that Tusk was unpopular among a large section of the public, he eventually announced that he was “burdened with [too much] baggage to return”. Instead, PO settled on Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski as its candidate. He finished a close second in the election to PiS-backed incumbent Andrzej Duda.

A number of recent media reports have indicated that Trzaskowski was opposed to Tusk’s return, and himself harboured ambitions to take over from Budka. After today’s council meeting, Trzaskowski refused to answer journalists’ questions, but later tweeted congratulations to Tusk.

Leading figures from PiS reacted with a mix of dismissiveness and disdain to the return of their old rival. “Who is Tusk?” joked Ryszard Terlecki, the head of PiS’s parliamentary caucus, when asked about today’s developments. “He was a serious rival, but much less so [now].”

“The emotional state of Mr Tusk is a bit disturbing,” tweeted deputy prime minister Piotr Gliński. “The guy who fled Poland, which had been stolen by the VAT mafia [under his rule], to earn 70,000 zloty a month [in Brussels] is now talking about thievery [by PiS].”

Kaczyński himself, in an interview with Gazeta Polska published yesterday, claimed that Tusk was only returning because he has “no other option” given his struggles in his current role as president of the European People’s Party (EPP), the largest grouping in the European Parliament.

The PiS chairman suggested that Tusk’s position as EPP president had been weakened by his “well-known lack of passion for hard work” and his “German-centricity”. PiS have often accused Tusk and PO of caring more for Germany’s interests than for Poland’s.

Tusk’s return comes amid a period of turmoil in both the PiS-led ruling coalition and the opposition. PO’s ambitions to form a united opposition with parties from left to centre-right have come to nothing. It has been overtaken in polls as the most popular opposition party by a newly formed centrist rival, Poland 2050 (Polska 2050).

PiS, meanwhile, recently lost its parliamentary majority following the resignation of three MPs. While in practice it can still muster a majority with the support of MPs from outside its caucus, PiS has also faced growing tension with his junior coalition partners, Agreement (Porozumienie) and United Poland (Solidarna Polska).

Kaczyński himself has spoken recently of the possible need for early elections. Some rumours have also suggested that opposition parties, perhaps with the support of Agreement, could seek to form an alternative government.

A number of commentators and figures from other opposition parties noted that the tone and content of Tusk’s speech today – which focused on attacking PiS and contained little by way of an alternative vision – suggested that PO will continue on the same path it has unsuccessfully pursued since 2015.

“As we know from the experience of the last five elections, [being only] anti-PiS does not win against PiS,” tweeted Anna-Maria Żukowska, a senior MP from The Left (Lewica), the second largest opposition group. “Tusk’s return squanders any chance of defeating PiS.”

“Tusk’s speech suggests maintaining the current PO line,” tweeted Tomasz Sawczuk of the Kultura Liberalna weekly. “[But] the dominant emotion changes: the main message [is that] more energy and self-confidence is needed.”

“Tusk’s speech is the greatest spectacle of hatred in the history of Polish, and perhaps European, politics,” wrote Stanisław Janecki for PiS-linked news website wPolityce. “No suggestions for the future, no positives, just 100% hate.”

Main image credit: Slawomir Kaminski / Agencja Gazeta

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.