Central and Eastern Europe, Opinion, Poland

The Return of Jarosław Kaczyński

Jarosław Kaczyński’s Law and Justice (PiS) party is back in power, after receiving 37.6% of the vote in last weekend’s general election and soundly defeating the incumbent Civic Platform, which won 24.1%. Following Andrzej Duda’s victory in the presidential election in May, a single party will form Poland’s government for the first time since communism’s end in 1989.

Indeed, Kaczyński now controls almost all levers of power in Poland. The only hope for those who believe that he and his party’s populist nationalism represent a threat to democracy is that PiS lacks, and probably cannot marshal, the two-thirds majority in the Sejm (parliament) needed to amend the constitution.

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Project Syndicate, October 27, 2015

Photo credit: Silar/Wikimedia Commons

Bio

Sławomir Sierakowski

Born in 1979, Sławomir Sierakowski is a Polish sociologist and political commentator. He is a founder and leader of Krytyka Polityczna (Political Critique), an Eastern European movement of liberal intellectuals, artists and activists, with branches in Ukraine and Russia. He is also the director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Warsaw and the president of the Stanislaw Brzozowski Association, overseeing its publishing house, its online opinion site, cultural centers in Warsaw, Gdansk, Lodz and Cieszyn, in Poland, and in Kiev, Ukraine, and 20 local clubs.

1 Comment

  1. Surely, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the prime minister from 2006 to 2007, again becomes the most powerful politician in Poland. Nevertheless his comeback is rather dramatic as recently it has turned out that his quirks are due to some serious genetic disease FXS, which then can lead to even mental retardation. I hear results of Lech Kaczynski’s DNA analysis has shown it. Most likely it’s the main reason why J. Kaczynski has refused now to run for the premier of Poland…
    http://homment.com/pQeC3y7HmF

    http://i.imgur.com/gby83li.jpg
    http://i.imgur.com/2Fdn3Xb.jpg
    http://i.imgur.com/lHGuEm5.jpg