Poland is holding an election Sunday that many view as its most important one since the 1989 vote that toppled communism. At stake are the health of the nation’s democracy, its legal stance on LGBTQ+ rights and abortion, and the foreign alliances of a country on NATO’s eastern flank that has been a crucial ally to Ukraine.
Political experts say the election will not be fully fair after eight years of governing by a conservative nationalist party that has eroded checks and balances to gain more control over state institutions, including the courts, public media and the electoral process itself.
Opponents of the ruling Law and Justice party fear it could be their last chance to preserve the constitutional system won at great cost through the struggle of many Poles, from former President Lech Walesa to the millions who supported his Solidarity movement.
I’m a little scared it will end up like Hungary too.
Slovakia already lost, there were elections couple of weeks ago. Pro russian and pro “peace” party won, which was stealing money for almost 2 decades. If poland loses too, central europe will be in bad place.
Welp, we’ll see. Wish i could afford to leave if these assholes win again…
Hasn’t Poland been an alt-right, christo-fascist state for a decade now?
That’s exactly the point. The elections could change that. Or improve it at least.
You say a decade but that’s just two election cycles, in the grand scale of things it’s not that long
In the grand scale of things humans have existed for a blip. In the grand scheme of things nothings matters.
I find that quite a useless argument to make.
Then why mention the time period in your original comment?
Because obviously it’s important? You are the one who is thinking in universe scale terms. I’m in the human realm where a decade is probably 1/8 to 1/7 of a human’s life and we can’t fast forward through it.
Exit polls say the opposition has the majority, in short PiS is gone
Ayyyy! Enjoy the celebrations!
Well, I’ve lived through it. We had tried before, and I’ve already voted today. Cut us some slack, PiS polls at around 35%, but due to political fragmentation and the D’Hont system favoring big parties they’ve managed to win two elections. They do not represent the average Pole, definitely not in this day and age.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Political experts say the election will not be fully fair after eight years of governing by a conservative nationalist party that has eroded checks and balances to gain more control over state institutions, including the courts, public media and the electoral process itself.
Opponents of the ruling Law and Justice party fear it could be their last chance to preserve the constitutional system won at great cost through the struggle of many Poles, from former President Lech Walesa to the millions who supported his Solidarity movement.
The election “will decide the future of Poland as a country of liberal democracy, a system that has been a guarantor of Polish success for the last three decades,” the editor of the Rzeczpospolita newspaper, Boguslaw Chrabota, wrote in a Friday editorial.
“I’m afraid that I’ll wake up after the elections and there will be such a change that, for example, abortion will be promoted (and) LGBT,” said civil servant Bozena Zych, 57, after leaving a Catholic church located in a hipster area of Warsaw filled with gay-friendly establishments.
Some interviewed in recent days by The Associated Press became very emotional or fought back tears as they described what they regard as corruption, democratic backsliding, propaganda and bitter divisions in Polish society since Law and Justice came to power in 2015.
Wojciech Przybylski, editor-in-chief of Visegrad Insight, a policy journal focused on Central Europe, said the practice threatens the ability of the middle class to advance socially “without special connections to politics.”
The original article contains 1,005 words, the summary contains 248 words. Saved 75%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
So far it looks like a whole lot more people attend elections this time comparing to 2019 or even presidental election in 2020. I was surprised how long the queue is to my voting point, so long that it takes an hour or more to vote.
