By Mitchell A. Orenstein
The results of Poland’s parliamentary elections on October 21 both surprised and reassured the world that Poland would not continue down the cantankerous path charted by the Kaczynski brothers. The twins Lech (president) and Jaroslaw (prime minister) ruled Poland in an increasingly improbable fashion since 2005. Their resounding defeat by Donald Tusk and his Civic Platform Party marked a major turning point for Poland. The impact of these elections will be to return Poland to Europe, repair its troubled relations with Germany and Russia and begin to rid the country of its image in Europe as America’s “Trojan donkey.” The election results also will enable the new government to relaunch a vigorous program of liberal economic reforms stalled under the Kaczynskis.
The Kaczynskis’ bizarre approach to foreign relations set their neighbors in Germany, the European Union and Russia on edge. After their initial election in 2005, they did not miss an opportunity to antagonize Germany—initially canceling the president’s first trip to Berlin over an unflattering cartoon in a small left-wing paper, then arguing that Poland would have more votes in a reformed EU if not for population losses suffered at the hands of Germany in World War II. The Kaczynskis adopted a confrontational tone with Russia over trade and pipelines and nearly brought an important EU summit to a halt over the issue of voting rights in the new reform treaty. Moreover, the Kaczynskis annoyed many of their European neighbors by supporting U.S. missile defense plans and the war in Iraq, where Poland maintained a 900-troop-strong contingent through 2007.
At home, the political controversy they awakened was even more intense. The Kaczynskis used anti-communist and anti-secret police investigations and screenings as well as arrests, detentions and criminal prosecutions to discredit their political opponents and even some allies. Supporters saw this as a much-needed campaign to root out the communist, secret police and oligarchical domination of Polish politics after 1989. Opponents saw the investigations as “witch hunts” and openly worried about the future of Polish democracy.
The Kaczynski Rationale
The Kaczynskis justified their approach by developing a unique critique of post-Communist Polish politics: They argued that the “third republic,” the period since 1989, was characterized by a misbegotten union between former communists and Solidarity liberals created at the roundtable talks that ended the communist regime. According to the Kaczynskis, these talks let the communists off without retribution and created an uklad (network or conspiracy) that shared the spoils of privatization and controlled the institutions of the state. The Kaczynskis cast their struggle against the “third republic” as a regime change and argued that their “fourth republic” would root out corrupt communist influence and set Poland on the path to law and order, self-respect and freedom.
Defenders of the “third republic” pointed out that far from being a colossal failure, the period was perhaps the most successful in Poland’s history. The country founded a market economy, emerged from the Russian sphere of influence, joined NATO and the EU and now enjoys the economic and security benefits achieved during that time. Despite this, the Kaczynskis’ vision stayed fixed on what they saw as the communist-liberal conspiracy that had ruled Poland since 1989.
One of this policy’s greatest costs to the Kaczynskis was to rule out a coalition with moderate liberals and force them to adopt partners on the radical right. Instead of allying with the liberal Civic Platform in 2005, Law and Justice shocked Poland and the world by forming a government with two extreme-right populist parties—the League of Polish Families (Liga), led by a quasi-fascist anti-Semite, and Self-Defense, led by Andrzej Lepper, Poland’s equivalent of the French populist farmer José Bové, known for blocking roads with pigs and raiding a meat plant to hand out sausages to the poor. These parties stood well outside European norms of civility and propriety. The Kaczynskis’ embrace of them caused major concern.
Yet this embrace of the radical right turned out to be a death grip. In a step no one saw coming in 2007, Law and Justice managed to discredit both smaller parties and steal their electorate. Lepper was simultaneously caught in a sex scandal and put under criminal investigation for corruption, while Liga’s key supporter and propagandist Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, Poland’s Rush Limbaugh and head of the radical Radio Maryja, was cajoled into switching his allegiance to the Kaczynskis. In July, a newsweekly closely associated with the government published tapes of Rydzyk making anti-Semitic comments (sure to antagonize the Vatican) and insulting President Kaczynski and his wife. The Kaczynskis backed Rydzyk and a few weeks later, when Law and Justice and Liga split, Rydzyk announced his support for Law and Justice.
Law and Justice’s coalition government fell in September 2007 as a result of these scandals, and for a moment the Kaczynskis looked like they were finished, victims of their own political style. Yet opinion polls showed the strategy had worked. Liga and Self-Defense dropped below the 5 percent threshold to enter parliament, and Law and Justice inherited their electorate. Law and Justice’s support began to increase in the polls, and on the eve of the election they were neck and neck with their center-right rival, Civic Platform.
Then came the debate.
On October 15, Donald Tusk and Jaroslaw Kaczynski met in a televised debate. Tusk went on the attack, asking the prime minister to answer to a slew of complaints about his regime, why Poland had built no new highways, why Poland had built no new housing, why Poland was losing its image abroad and why the government was using secret police methods to ruin its opponents. Like a schoolyard bully, Kaczynski seemed to wither under the attack. To American eyes, it looked surprisingly like the famous Edward R. Murrow interview with Senator Joseph McCarthy; the emperor lost his clothes when faced with strong, direct, challenging questions.
End of a Regime
High voter turnout provided the margin of victory for Tusk, with 41 percent of the vote. Young and urban voters turned out in force to deny Jaroslaw Kaczynski another term in office. Whereas only 40 percent of Poles voted in 2005, 53 percent went to the polls in 2007, sending Law and Justice into the colorful opposition. Though the Law and Justice party won 32 percent of the vote and Lech Kaczynski remains president, the party does not have enough votes to prevent parliament from overturning a presidential veto. In the new Sejm (Poland’s decisive lower house of parliament), Civic Platform will have 209 seats, Law and Justice 166, the Left and Democrats 53 and the Peasant Party 31. The Kaczynski regime is finished, for now.
What does this mean for Poland’s relations with the outside world? Tusk’s first step as prime minister-elect was to announce trips to Brussels, Washington and Moscow in order to begin repairing ties with Europe and Russia. At the same time, he promised to have an honest conversation with the United States about missile defense sites in Poland and withdrawing the Polish contingent from Iraq.
In short, Poland will diametrically turn away from the antagonistic foreign policies of the Kaczynski government, policies that seemed designed to ruin Poland’s reputation in the international community.
Foreign observers often complained that the Kaczynskis seemed to care little about what the rest of the world thought and preferred instead to manipulate foreign policy in order to achieve strategic advantage in domestic politics. However, this was not wholly accurate. The Kaczynskis cared greatly about Poland’s place in the world. They just had a very different idea of what that place should be.
The Kaczynskis represent a long nationalist tradition in Poland that views its large neighboring states with suspicion and seeks greater regional power status. They see the Russians as natural enemies and Germans as potential colonists. Much of their fight against secret police control was simultaneously directed against suspected Russian influence through old KGB ties. The Kaczynskis similarly suspect Germany of seeking to reassert colonial rule via the EU and even of seeking to reassert claims to Polish land taken from Germany after 1945. The decision by Russia and Germany to build a direct gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea—bypassing Poland—was seen as a worst-case scenario of Russo-German cooperation. The good news for the United States is that the Kaczynskis saw America as a potential counter-balance to the EU and Russia and thus went along with American plans to put missile defense systems in Poland and the war in Iraq.
What the Kaczynskis wanted most of all was for Poland to be taken seriously in world affairs, consulted regularly and treated like a strategic country. They opposed the strategy of previous Polish governments of cozying up to the EU. Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski compared this approach to that of “an ugly girl looking to get married,” casting adoring glances at scornful suitors. Instead of love, the Kaczynskis sought respect. The question is: Did the country achieve respect or simply notoriety under their rule?
On the one hand, the Kaczynskis were able to extract a great deal from the EU reform treaty summit on voting rights—a 10-year extension of a system that gives Poland, a country of 38 million, 27 votes, while twice-larger Germany gets only 29. On the other hand, the Kaczynskis incurred the wrath and disdain of the entire foreign press corps and a large number of domestic journalists. They did not achieve stature abroad so much as near-universal repulsion. (As anecdotal evidence, when planning a recent panel discussion at SAIS on the Polish elections, organizers had to wrack their brains and rake their Rolodexes to find even one established academic or think-tank scholar in Washington, D.C., to support the Law and Justice view. This effort was ultimately unsuccessful.)
Tusk will return Poland to the path it has taken since 1989, seeking to become a reliable senior partner in the EU. A large state, Poland is by far the most important accession country to have joined in 2004 or 2007. Though smaller than the big four (Britain, France, Germany and Italy) in population, Poland has a nearly equivalent population to that of Spain and seeks to have similar if not greater clout as the leader of the Central and East European regional group. Poland’s previous president, Aleksander Kwasniewski, for instance, led the EU delegation to Ukraine during the 2004 Orange Revolution.
Tusk also will initiate a major overhaul in economic policy. Like other Central European liberal governments leaders, he will seek to use his term in office to initiate a second stage of radical neoliberal reforms, including implementing a 15 percent flat tax on income, one of the lowest rates in Europe; renewing a commitment to quick privatization of 1,200 state-owned enterprises; and adopting the euro at the first opportunity, possibly in 2012. In doing so, Tusk appears to be taking a page out of the playbook of Slovak finance minister Ivan Miklos, who implemented similar reforms in 2004–05. Tusk will have to find support for these reforms from other parties in parliament, which may prove difficult, but his strong electoral mandate should make many reforms possible.
The international community (particularly the EU) is pleased to have the Kaczynski moment behind it. In defeating the Kaczynskis, Poland exorcised some demons from its past and set itself on track again to be one of the leading reform states not only in Central and Eastern Europe, but in Europe as a whole.
Mitchell A. Orenstein is the S. Richard Hirsch Professor of European Studies.
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