By Roman Broszkowski
With polls suggesting that there is a real chance to finally unseat the ruling national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, Donald Tusk, the leader of Poland’s largest opposition grouping, the centrist Civic Coalition (KO), has repeatedly called on the heterogenous pro-democracy opposition to contest the country’s 2023 parliamentary elections as a single “unity list”.
But while some left-wing activists believe such a coalition to be necessary — and some experts argue that a single bloc could swing the electoral math in the opposition’s favour — left-wing party officials and members of parliament appear to be in near unanimity in keeping KO at arm’s length — at least until after the election.
In Poland, “votes are counted by the d’Hondt system…which is beneficial for [coalitions] which are bigger,” Joanna Sawicka, a senior analyst with the Polityka Insight think tank, explains.
“The biggest opposition party — Civic Coalition — wants to create a joint list to create a big coalition and get more seats and [ensure] all the democratic oppositional parties cross the threshold,” she adds. Under the electoral system, parties that receive less than 5% of the vote, and coalitions that receive less than 8%, do not enter parliament.
But while Tusk has couched his overtures as forming a united democratic front against the increasingly authoritarian tendencies of the ruling coalition, others argue that the push for a joint list is actually about jockeying for power ahead of forming a post-election government.
Even the most optimistic polls for the Civic Coalition, a grouping dominated by Tusk’s Civic Platform (PO) party, show that it will not win enough seats to form an outright majority, meaning that a coalition government is all but guaranteed after next autumn’s election if Law and Justice and its allies lose.
“PO is not going to be a ruling party by itself…If you look at the polls, it is obvious. None of the parties in Poland can rule on their own, not even PiS. There has always been a coalition government since 1990,” said Anna Maria Żukowska, an MP for The Left (Lewica) coalition, Poland’s second-largest opposition group.
“So as The Left we know that forming a future government requires forming it with other pro-democracy parties.”
In addition to The Left alliance, other major opposition parties have also signalled their willingness to enter a grand governing coalition after the elections that would likely be led by the Civic Coalition.
Yet how much power each party in such a government would have remains to be seen. For members of The Left, they believe their power will stem from a potential ability to play kingmaker for a future Tusk premiership.
“Our doctrine is that if you want to enforce anything…you have to have the seats needed for the majority,” Żukowska says.
“Well, Donald Tusk can give you a promise, of legalising same-sex partnerships, for example. Of course, he can. Why not? Yet why would he deliver on this promise, bearing in mind so many other promises that he hasn’t fulfilled? But if you have the seats in parliament that he needs to become prime minister, you can make him deliver that. We are hoping to have that power in the future Sejm.”
In addition to possible pre-government manoeuvring, another motivation for PO’s push for unity might be to signal to voters the alliance’s willingness to cooperate, even if that cooperation is unlikely to happen.
“People like it when politicians cooperate with each other,” Sawicka explains. “The biggest support for this cooperation is among Civic Coalition’s electorate [while] in other electorates, the support is still quite big, but it is for sure lower.”
Indeed, some left-wing activists believe that working with the Civic Coalition before the election, by forming a joint list, will be necessary to ensure not only that PiS is excluded from power, but that the Left is included in the post-election government.
“The left wing is the most anti-PiS in general,” says Katarzyna Przyborska, an editor at Krytyka Polityczna, a left-wing journal.
“The Left’s voters want to push PiS away from power, and if they [think] that their votes can be [wasted], they will vote for KO, like for example, during the [2020] presidential election, most left-wing voters voted for [the centrist opposition candidate Rafał] Trzaskowski.”
In that election, The Left’s candidate, Robert Biedroń, received a disappointing 2.2% of the vote while Trzaskowski – a leader of PO’s more socially liberal wing – received 30.3% in the first round and came close to winning the final run-off, with 49% of the vote to PiS-supported incumbent Andrzej Duda’s 51%.
Yet several party representatives of The Left remain unconvinced by Przyborska’s argument. They argue that a unity list may have the opposite effect and demotivate voters from each individual party’s base.
“A joint list has always been an impossible thing to do because of the differences between the programs, differences between our policies, and our views on the economy. That might discourage future electorates from voting for such a list,” says Żukowska.
“Had there been one all-encompassing list, the person who has always voted for PSL [the Polish People’s Party] — which is a conservative party — would have their candidate running from the same list as, for example, me, who is a feminist, pro-abortion, and a fighter for LGBT+ rights. This would be a bit awkward and might make those people who wanted to vote for an opposition to PiS not vote at all.”
Other party activists note that there remains a lot of distance between the policies of The Left and the Civic Coalition, especially in areas concerning LGBT people and women’s rights, despite recent declarations by Tusk of support for abortion on demand and same-sex unions.
“[The Civic Coalition] is not credible [on these issues]. This is one of the main things that people in the polls also talk about,” says Zofia Malisz, a member of the national council of Together (Razem) one of the constituent parties of The Left.
“They have already been in government twice, and they promised in their electoral campaigns, for example, civil unions for LGBT people, and that never happened. They have never stopped … the assault by conservatives on reproductive rights. They have always overpromised on that front, and they never delivered.”
However, Sawicka — the political analyst from Polityka Insight — downplays those policy differences by noting that the Civic Coalition has tried to take a socially liberal tone on these issues. To her, the fundamental stumbling block for a unity list is trust.
“I can imagine that [the Civic Coalition] is not trustworthy anymore for such voters [who prioritise LGBT and women’s rights], but actually now they’re trying to be very leftist in their social views and they talk a lot about civil rights, abortion rights, and so on,” she said. “For some people maybe [Tusk is not trustworthy], but he’s trying.”
Malisz for her part remains unconvinced and points to the fate of other left-leaning parties that have joined the Civic Coalition.
“The past teaches us that this is not an invitation to a partnership really, what [Tusk] is doing, in practice,” she said. “When you have a look at the fate of the Polish Green Party… and you have a look at the program of that coalition that they joined with [PO], you do not even find the word climate change in there.”
It appears increasingly unlikely that any united electoral group will include The Left – or indeed that there will be a joint opposition list at all.
“I don’t think there are any chances of The Left joining a unity list for there will not be any unity list at all,” says Żukowska.
“And it’s not even because of us. It’s [because] Poland 2050 [Polska 2050] and Polish Coalition [Koalicja Polska] have already stated decidedly months ago that they would not form or join such a list,” she adds, referring to two other opposition groups. “Therefore it’s not even a question to be addressed to The Left.”
So far out from the election, it is hard to say what a failure of the opposition to form a unity list would mean. As the election campaign crystalises in early 2023 things may become clearer, and variables simplify, but as of yet, it is too difficult to tell how different party alliances will impact the final seat numbers and just as importantly — according to Sawicka — how large a majority a new government would have.
“It’s very hard to predict how many voters will support [a joint electoral] coalition and how many of them will be demobilised,” says Sawicka. “According to the polls [in] which all the parties [stand] separately, they still can form a majority after the election. So I don’t think it would be a catastrophe for them if they go separately, but they [are not] only fighting to form a majority. They also want to have a strong majority.”
For Malisz, the best way to secure that strong majority in the election is for each party to retain a separate identity and directly communicate to different electorates their visions for a post-PiS Poland.
“We can address our electorate better if we are not in one bag,” Malisz said. “We can go out and talk to people that support the left; they can go out and talk to the people that support [Poland 2050 leader Szymon] Hołownia … PO can go out and … gather as much support as they can with their program. And then after the election, we will have a look at what comes out.”
Main image credit: Klub Lewicy/Flickr (under public domain)
