By Aleks Szczerbiak
In spite of losing its majority, Poland’s right-wing ruling party is very unlikely to call a snap autumn election. However, given the precarious parliamentary arithmetic, this could change if the situation proves too unstable, and it may call an early spring poll if it can secure the passage of flagship economic reforms.
Gowin leaves the government
Earlier this month, the Polish government – led, since autumn 2015, by the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party – fractured following the dismissal of deputy prime minister and economy minister Jarosław Gowin. Gowin is leader of the liberal-conservative Agreement (Porozumienie) party, PiS’s junior partner in the United Right coalition, and his sacking was followed by the immediate departure of a group of his closest allies from the governing camp’s parliamentary caucus.
Gowin’s departure is the culmination of months of unrest within the government. The dispute dates back to last summer when he resigned from, and threatened to pull his party out of, the government over a disagreement about the timing of the presidential election.
On that occasion, Agreement remained within the ruling coalition, the election was postponed by a few weeks, and Gowin re-joined the government following an autumn ministerial reshuffle.
Nonetheless, PiS remained wary of him, suspecting he had undertaken behind-the-scenes negotiations with the opposition, and the next few months were characterised by Agreement MPs repeatedly contesting and voting against key elements of PIS’s governing programme. Indeed, some commentators argued that Gowin was a semi-detached member of the government, and it was only a matter of time before he left it formally.
The situation escalated dramatically in August when PiS prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki fired Anna Kornecka, one of Gowin’s deputy ministers and also an Agreement member, after she criticised the ruling party’s flagship “Polish Deal” post-pandemic recovery programme, claiming that proposed tax increases would not be limited to higher earners.
Launched in May, the Polish Deal includes a wide range of (partly EU-funded) ambitious policies to boost economic growth and living standards including tax reforms favouring lower and middle-income earners. PiS is hoping that the Polish Deal will re-build support for the government and help the party win an unprecedented third term in office.
Agreement responded to Kornecka’s sacking by placing three conditions on its future membership of the government. These included calls to amend plans to introduce steep increases in health care premiums and tax burdens for small and medium-sized firms, and supplement the Polish Deal with new rules to protect local authorities, who they argue could see a substantial drop in funding.
A third condition involved amending a draft media ownership law designed to strengthen the existing ban on companies from outside the European Economic Area (EU states, Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein) from owning a controlling stake in Polish media firms.
The latter is widely seen as targeting TVN, Poland’s largest private television network which is controlled by the US-based media conglomerate Discovery but formally owned by a Dutch-registered company so that it meets existing Polish rules; which it would not if the new law is passed.
TVN’s news channel TVN24 provides extremely critical coverage of the government from a liberal-left perspective and PiS’s opponents argue that the legislation is intended to silence the independent media; as well as damaging Poland’s image and creating a rift with the USA, the country’s main international security guarantor.
PiS, on the other hand, says that the new rules are similar to those in other EU countries and necessary to prevent companies from non-democratic states taking control of Polish media companies, and money launderers and the narco-businesses entering the country’s media sector.
Relying on Kukiz and independents
This ultimatum proved to be the tipping point that led to Gowin’s dismissal. The key question then became: how many of his allies would follow Gowin in leaving the governing camp? There were originally 18 Agreement members elected to parliament in autumn 2019, but since then deputies have been peeling away from the group.
In February, for example, a pro-PiS faction within Agreement led by MEP Adam Bielan tried (reportedly with the ruling party’s tacit support) unsuccessfully to wrest control of the party from Gowin.
In June, Bielan’s supporters formed a breakaway grouping, the Republican Party (Partia Republikańska), which four Agreement parliamentarians joined. Although most of the party’s deputies stuck with Gowin, by the time of his departure from the government he was down to a hard core of 11 and only five of these left the United Right to form a new Agreement parliamentary caucus (together with one previously unaffiliated parliamentarian), while the remainder continued to support the administration.
Nonetheless, the departure of Gowin and his allies reduced the United Right caucus from 232 to only 227 deputies out of 460 in total in the Sejm, the more powerful lower house of parliament. This deprived the government of its formal majority and left PiS dependent upon deputies outside of the governing camp to win key votes. There are currently two independents who, although not formally part of the ruling party, normally vote with PiS.
The party also has a cooperation agreement with right-wing anti-establishment rock star-turned-politician Paweł Kukiz, who leads the eponymous Kukiz’15 grouping comprising four deputies, and has promised to back the government in key votes; it can normally rely on the support of three of these. Assuming no further defections, this gives the government a de facto parliamentary majority, albeit a very narrow and unpredictable one.
PiS also hopes to secure support from the 11-strong Confederation (Konfederacja) caucus, an eclectic mix of radical free marketeers and nationalists, in at least some votes; although this is a very unreliable and controversial partner whose strategic objective is to replace the ruling party as Poland’s main conservative grouping by challenging it on its radical right flank.
The first test of the government’s parliamentary strength was a vote on the media law which, as noted above, was one of the main bones of contention between PiS and Agreement. Indeed, the ruling party suffered a shock defeat when the Sejm passed, by 229 votes to 227, an opposition-sponsored procedural motion that would have delayed consideration of the law until September.
However, Kukiz’15 deputies said that they supported the opposition motion by mistake and PiS-nominated Sejm speaker Elżbieta Witek repeated the vote, illegally according to the opposition. The draft media law was then finally voted through with 228 deputies in favour, 216 against and 10 abstentions (including nine Confederation deputies).
Is the “Polish Deal” a game-changer?
The parliamentary arithmetic is, therefore, very precarious for PiS and it has clearly taken a huge risk in forcing out Gowin. The ruling party will now have to engage in numerous policy compromises and concessions, as well as using its full arsenal of state appointments and government patronage, to keep Kukiz’15, independents and potential defectors on board.
PiS is particularly vulnerable to losing second-order and procedural votes through pro-government deputies peeling off to demonstrate their independence or simply being absent; especially as many ruling party parliamentarians also have day-to-day ministerial responsibilities.
Moreover, to overturn amendments voted through by the Senate, Poland’s opposition-controlled second chamber, PiS needs an absolute majority of all Sejm deputies present, not just those voting for or against, so any abstentions (by, say, Confederation deputies) count as votes against.
Nonetheless, PiS is very unlikely to gamble on an early election (the next one is scheduled for autumn 2023), at least not before next spring. This is partly because a motion to dissolve parliament requires a two-thirds majority so needs opposition support.
An early election can also be called if the government resigns and there are three unsuccessful attempts to secure a vote of confidence in a successor, but this is a potentially lengthy and politically debilitating process that PiS could easily lose control of.
There is also a serious risk that the ruling party would lose an early election. Although – according to the “E-wybory” website, which aggregates voting intention surveys – PiS remains Poland’s most popular party, its poll ratings have fallen from an average of around 40% last summer and now fluctuate around the 30-35% mark, which would leave it short of a parliamentary majority.
PiS is instead hoping that its Polish Deal programme will be a political game-changer. Up until now, it has not had a transformative effect on the ruling party’s polling numbers. But PiS believes that this is because many Poles associate the plan with the tax hikes that are required to help finance it, rather than the package of tax cuts and social spending measures from which a large majority will benefit.
A June survey conducted by the CBOS polling agency found that only 23% of respondents felt that they would benefit from the proposed tax reforms, 30% thought they would lose, and 31% that the effects would be neutral.
And a key reason for this, PiS feels, has been the criticisms of the programme’s fiscal elements by Gowin and his allies. This is why the party concluded that losing its formal parliamentary majority was a lesser evil than having a leading government member constantly undermining the Polish Deal. PiS is hoping that when these reforms are enacted, and most Poles realise that they will benefit from them, this will push up its polling numbers. That is why it is so important for the party to secure the passage of the relevant legislation before the next election is held.
A spring 2022 election?
Whether or not the government really has a stable majority will become clearer when parliament resumes in September. In addition to securing the passage of the main elements of the Polish Deal, a key test for PiS will be whether it can defend its ministers and other key appointees from parliamentary votes of no-confidence. The first trial of strength here is likely to be an opposition attempt to oust Witek, following her controversial chairing of the parliamentary session on the draft media law.
If it transpires that the government lacks a reliable majority, there could still be an autumn election. For sure, Polish experience suggests that it is possible for a party to govern for a considerable period of time as a minority administration. To replace a government, an opposition has to secure the passage of a so-called “constructive vote of no-confidence” in favour of a specific alternative prime ministerial candidate.
This will be extremely difficult in the current parliament, where even a minimal majority for any alternative to PiS would have to encompass an extremely broad range of parties ranging from the radical left to radical right. However, PiS knows how debilitating it will be if it finds itself simply being in office administering but unable to govern effectively. It could then conclude that the only way to break the deadlock is to risk a snap parliamentary poll
In fact, even if PiS finds that it can command a working majority over the next few months, with the parliamentary arithmetic being so uncertain it is still unlikely to let the parliament run its full course. If it can secure the passage of the Polish Deal reforms and starts to see its polling support recover, the most likely scenario is probably a spring 2022 election.
Not least because, if PiS can block approval of next year’s state budget, there is a more straightforward constitutional pathway to dissolving parliament at the start of next year that only requires the consent of party-backed President Andrzej Duda.
Main image credit: Kancelaria Sejmu/Rafał Zambrzycki (under CC BY 2.0)
