Polish parliament approves postponing local elections

The lower house of Poland’s parliament has voted in favour of delaying local elections due in autumn next year until spring 2024, in what the government says is a necessary organisational measure but critics say undermines the democratic process.

The ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, which put forward the measure, argues that it will help avoid a clash with parliamentary elections that are also due next autumn. However, the opposition accuses PiS, which has been falling in the polls, of wanting to delay the election for its own political benefit.

In the vote, a narrow majority of 231 MPs in the 460-seat Sejm were in favour of the postponement. Support came from PiS and its allies, while all opposition parties were opposed to the bill, which now passes to the upper-house Senate.

While the opposition holds a majority in the Senate, it can only delay legislation supported by the more powerful Sejm. Once the bill is adopted by parliament, it is sent for approval or rejection by President Andrzej Duda, who is normally a PiS ally but has been known to wield his veto.

Under the proposed law, the terms of officials elected at the last local elections in 2018 will end not in autumn 2023 as planned, but instead on 30 April 2024.

According to the group of PiS MPs behind the bill, it is not possible to efficiently conduct two different votes next autumn, when parliamentary elections are also due to take place. They say that such concerns had been expressed by the electoral commission and local officials.

The opposition, however, rejects these arguments, noting that the new date of local elections will be similarly close to European elections due in spring 2024. It believes that the real reason is PiS’s fear that a poor result in the local elections will pave the way for a defeat in the subsequent parliamentary elections, reports RMF24.

“Today, as your ratings are falling, it appears that a six-week gap between local and parliamentary elections is not enough but the same six weeks that will separate local and European elections after the change is OK,” said Jacek Protas of Civic Coalition (KO), quoted by Gazeta Wyborcza. He called the bill “scandalous”.

However, one opposition mayor – Jacek Majchrowski of Kraków – welcomed the idea. He told RMF FM that “spring is a better date for elections” because it allows newly elected officials to create their own budget for the next year rather than inherit one from their predecessors.

Maciej Czapluk, senior legal analyst for Polityka Insight, notes that PiS normally fares relatively badly in local elections and, by delaying them, can “clear the field before the elections to the Sejm and Senate” because “poor results in the local elections could weaken the morale of PiS voters ahead of the parliamentary elections”.

The proposal was also criticised by the electoral expert panel and the legal expert panel of the Stefan Batory Foundation, a liberal think tank.

“Changes to election rules during the term of office, introduced in haste, without consultation or attempts to build broad party consensus, undermine citizens’ confidence in the electoral process,” they wrote in a statement.

A United Surveys poll published yesterday by Dziennik Gazeta Prawna and RMF found that a majority of the public (57%) want the local elections to take place in autumn 2023 as planned, while only 21% want to delay them.

Main image credit: Mikolaj Kuras / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.