Polish party launches app to allow members to set policy

A political party has launched Poland’s first app that members can use to vote on policy. The app, called Jaśmina (Polish for Jasmine), was unveiled as the “special guest” at the centrist Poland 2050’s (Polska 2050) first national congress.

Szymon Hołownia, the party’s leader, declared the app a “groundbreaking” development that would change Polish politics. Some, however, dismissed it as a gimmick, while others expressed disappointment that the much-touted mystery special guest was not a real person (one rumour had suggested it would be Michelle Obama).

All members of Poland 2050 can use the app, which can be downloaded from the App Store and Google Play, to vote on issues that decide party policy. The first of these is a poll on whether Poland’s Sunday trading ban should be tightened or liberalised.

“What members decide will be part of Poland 2050’s official programme,” Hołownia promised. The app, which he described as Poland’s “first political friend”, will also “inform about events taking place in the area and what is worth doing today,” he added, quoted by Polsat News.

“This is truly groundbreaking in Polish politics,” Hołownia said. “It is about making use of the fact that we are a digital society to build as democratic a republic as possible, one where we talk to each other.”

Poland 2050 MP Michał Gramatyka explained that users of the new app will be able to access full-length and shortened programme documents as well as a “who’s who” of the party to find local contacts.

He also said that the app’s “most important” voting function will be widened if the party enters government, reports TVN24. “This function is now available to members of the Poland 2050 association. But when we come to power, it will be available to all Poles. Because this is how we see new politics…the politics of the digital era.”

However, on social media and in reviews on the Google Play store (where the app currently has only a 2.4 out of 5 average rating), a number of users reported technical problems. Technology magazine Komputer Świat wrote that the app “does not offer much for the average user” so far.

Introducing further elements of Poland 2050’s programme, Hołownia said that for him the “better Poland” he wanted to leave for his daughter’s generation meant “green democracy”.

After his speech was interrupted by three activists holding a banner reading “Poland without Coal 2030” and bearing a Greenpeace logo, Hołownia said that phasing out coal was one of the mainstays of its programme, but that would not be possible before 2035 without “social anxieties and blood on the streets”.

Poland today has “a state of emergency on the border and a state of war between us,” he argued, using a sporting metaphor to say that the leaders have turned teammates against each other.

“We are all stuck in a heart of darkness, with democracy being stolen from us before our eyes, people being set on each other for our money, the state being taken away from us,” he added.

Declaring his party to have “the best substantive preparation for government in the history of Poland”, Hołownia said it would restore the rule of law and abolish the Constitutional Tribunal,  reports Polsat News.

He also vowed to reform the state’s relations with the Catholic church, enforcing the constitutional divide between them, replacing the state Church Fund with a voluntary tax, and appointing prosecutors to investigate clerical child abuse.

Hołownia, a former TV presenter and Catholic commentator who entered politics in 2020 as a presidential candidate, promised to combat nepotism in state-owned companies and to recognise young people’s political activism by lowering the voting age to 16.

After a third-place showing in last year’s presidential election, he founded the Poland 2050 movement last summer with the aim of “breaking the diseased duopoly” of the ruling national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party and opposition Civic Platform (PO). It became a political party this spring.

The party’s parliamentary caucus currently has seven MPs after several defections. But its support has recently been dented by the return of former prime minister Donald Tusk to lead centrist rival PO, whose polling numbers have risen while Poland 2050’s have declined.

Main image credit: Facebook/Polska 2050

Ben Koschalka

Ben Koschalka is a translator and senior editor at Notes from Poland. Originally from Britain, he has lived in Kraków since 2005.