Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
Poland emerged from its Communist-imposed political system 25 years ago, and since then the country has been home to a lively multi-party political culture.
Poland is a nation-state with few cultural or religious minorities – almost all its citizens are ethnically Polish and Roman Catholic by heritage.
That wasn’t always the case. Before the Second World War, in a Poland with different borders, only some 68 per cent of the population spoke Polish as its first language. The country was also inhabited by Belarusians and Ukrainians in the east, Germans in the west, and Jews in most of the larger towns and cities.
But after the war the Germans were expelled and the territories with Belarusians and Ukrainians were incorporated into the Soviet Union. Most Jews were murdered by the Nazis during the war.
During its decades under Communism Poland remained a very cohesive society, and one closely wedded to its Catholic faith. The Church was seen as a repository of Polish culture. So during the Communist period political discourse on the part of those opposed to the regime revolved around values rather than just economic interests.
Hence the rise of Solidarity in 1980 signified more than just the creation of a trade union fighting for workers’ rights. It quickly came to represent the “true” nation, symbolized by its use of Catholic and papal emblems.
Solidarity’s leader, Lech Walesa, sported on the lapel of his jacket a pin with the image of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa, known as the Queen of Poland. The icon portraying Mary and the infant Jesus is housed in the Pauline monastery on Jasna Gora in the city.
Through the 1980s, its fields filled with Solidarity banners raised by hundreds of thousands of the outlawed movement’s supporters.
Of course after 1989 “real” politics emerged in a Poland free of Soviet control and it was no longer possible for Solidarity to remain a purely oppositional movement, so the anti-Communist consensus evaporated.
Most of the political parties that emerged tried to portray themselves as the legitimate successor to Solidarity and so debate continued to revolve around matters of identity and values, which produced a moralistic tone in politics.
Eventually, though, two ideological strands emerged out of the Solidarity tradition. One was dedicated to traditional and Christian values, the other to market and pluralist principles based on competition and individualism.
The former view was espoused by the Law and Justice (PiS) Party, the latter by Civic Platform (PO). They have become the dominant parties in the country.
The political debate emerged in full force in the 2005 election, as questions of national identity, historical memory, and religious commitment appeared as focal points in the contest. That year Poles elected PiS candidate Lech Kaczynski, the mayor of Warsaw, to a five year term as president. He narrowly defeated the PO nominee, Donald Tusk.
The PiS also received the most votes in the parliamentary elections held later in 2005 and formed a minority government under Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz. He was replaced by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the president’s twin brother, a year later.
However, new parliamentary elections were held again in 2007, this time won resoundingly by the PO, and Donald Tusk became prime minister.
On April 10, 2010, several members of the Polish political elite, including President Lech Kaczynski, were killed in an airplane crash in Russia. Presidential elections held a few months later saw Bronislaw Komorowski of the PO beat PiS standard-bearer Jaroslaw Kaczynski. As Tusk remained prime minister, it ensured PO dominance across the political landscape.
The most recent parliamentary election, held in October 2011, saw Donald Tusk’s PO win with 39 per cent of the vote to about 30 per cent for the PiS. The PO gained 207 of the 460 seats in the Sejm, the lower house of parliament, and formed a coalition with the Polish People’s Party (PSL), which won 28 seats. The PiS won 157 seats.
This coming December, Tusk will become president of the European Council, the institution of the European Union that comprises the heads of state or government of its members; he has been replaced as prime minister by Ewa Kopacz.
While the PO is an enthusiastic supporter of the EU, the PiS remains more wary, claiming that the PO’s focus on markets and Europe has harmed Poland’s commitment to its Christian principles of morality and social justice.
Religious influence and the Catholic Church’s presence in public life continue to roil the political waters in Poland. The fault line between the two parties lies along a clerical-anticlerical axis, involving religious and secular identities.
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