The results of the presidential elections in Poland gave a boost to the aspirations of the liberal Rafal Trazkowski, who will come strong in the second round to challenge the candidate for reelection, the far-right president Andrzej Duda. The polls at the ballot box that the local media released at the end of the elections give Duda the victory with 41.8 percent of the votes, while the centrist Trzaskowski would rise with 30.4 percent of suffrages. Meanwhile, the announcement of the official results is scheduled for Monday morning. By not exceeding 50 percent of the votes, the two candidates for the presidency will have to face off in a second round that is presumed to be very contested and in which the opposition leader and current mayor of Warsaw could win.
In a first reaction from the official bunker, President Duda thanked citizens for their participation and recalled that during his term he had made “difficult decisions”, although these are rewarded with an improvement in his electoral performance: 41.8 per percent compared to 34.7 percent obtained in 2015 in the first round. The public, among various Polish flags, cheered him to the cry of “Poland is here!”, Booing Trzaskowski when the president congratulated him on his good results.
The liberal candidate, meanwhile, appeared in Warsaw to celebrate the preliminary figures. “With these results, one can go and fight for Poland,” Trazkowski said optimistically. According to polls published before the presidential elections, both candidates would be practically tied in the second round, in which the opposition leader could win by a few tenths of an advantage.
Trzaskowski, rising star of the liberal center Civic Platform party, now feels capable of aspiring to a success that no one predicted a month ago, when the government was forced to postpone the elections, originally scheduled for May 10, due to the coronavirus. . The decisive factor will be the behavior of the supporters of the other nine presidential candidates who were eliminated in this first round.
Participation in these elections, which is around 62.9 percent according to the first polls, contrasts with the presidential elections of 2015, in which only 50 percent of the qualified Poles voted, and points to a mobilization of the electorate unhappy with the authoritarian drift of the Law and Justice Party (PiS), represented by President Duda.
In the 2019 legislatures, the PiS lost control of the Senate, so an opposition victory in the presidential elections would be a second blow to a party that, according to analysts, is not used to institutionality. In the Polish semi-presidential system, the head of state has, among other powers, the ability to veto the approval of laws that are manifestly contrary to the rule of law. In that sense, Trzaskowski could put a brake on PiS attempts to exercise unfettered control over all institutions.
With deeply nationalistic rhetoric, Duda places himself in the orbit of the Visegrad Four, community states that like Hungary reject what they consider to be Brussels interference in internal matters, such as the relationship between government and institutions. The followers of the president do not only appreciate his profile as a good Catholic and family man, instead, the social measures approved under his mandate, such as child benefits or a rise in the minimum wage, stand out.
For his part, Trzaskowski promises to strengthen ties with the European Union. Despite the fact that the economic liberalism that his party displayed in the past raised doubts in the center-left, in a campaign that was focused on values and freedoms, Trzaskowski now emerges as the perfect antithesis of Duda. So, While the ultra-conservative charged against “LGBT ideology”, which he conceives as a threat to the traditional family, the mayor of Warsaw last year signed an anti-discrimination declaration, and openly defends the right to gay marriage.
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