Voters backed three opposition parties that appear to have sufficient strength to form a coalition in the 460-member lower house of parliament, defeating the conservative Law and Justice party. which has ruled since 2015. The final count gave the coalition a total of 248 seats and also 66 in the Senate, compared with 194 and 34, respectively, for Law and Justice.
Just as promising was the turnout: Some 74 percent of Poles voted, the highest percentage since the fall of communism. Long lines formed at polling stations; some voters in the city of Wroclaw stood in line until nearly 3 a.m. The voter surge came despite signs that the electoral playing field was tilted toward Law and Justice. According to preliminary conclusions of the observer mission for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, “The ruling party enjoyed clear advantage through its undue influence over the use of state resources and the public media.” The candidates campaigned freely, the observers said, but the public broadcaster “openly favored the ruling party,” as did state-controlled companies.
The road ahead for Civic Coalition — which won the most seats among the opposition parties and is led by former European Council president Donald Tusk — and its allies won’t be easy. The handoff of power might not take place for two months, and President Andrzej Duda, a former member of Law and Justice who has been loyal to the party and holds a powerful veto, serves until 2025. To override a veto, parliament needs a three-fifths majority, which the new coalition will not have.
Still, Mr. Tusk campaigned on a promise to restore democratic values and heal rifts with Europe, and the campaign results give reason to hope he can begin to do so. Slowly steering Poland toward autocracy, Law and Justice was inspired by the example of Hungary’s Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party in building an illiberal political regime. Law and Justice moved to strip courts of their independence, take control of independent media or drive them out of business, and silence critics of its far-right social policies. In an ominous statement, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Law and Justice’s chairman, said on election night, “Remember that ahead of us are days of struggle, days of tension.” Clearly, to reverse the past eight years — including Law and Justice’s near-total ban on abortion and hostility toward LGBTQ+ rights — will require painstaking effort.
High on the priority list should be to halt the split with the European Union. Distressed by Poland’s backsliding on democratic principles, including judicial independence, the European Commission moved to end Poland’s voting rights as an E.U. member, blocked payout of aid from a pandemic recovery fund, and filed suit against Poland at the European Court of Justice, while the European Parliament passed resolutions decrying Poland’s forsaking of the rule of law and other democratic values. Before the vote, Mr. Tusk promised, “The day after the elections, I will go and unblock the money.” It will not be that easy, but the change in overall approach should bring relief to Brussels and beyond.
The results ease an E.U. identity crisis. Applying membership conditions that require liberal, democratic order in states seeking to join jump-started democratic reform as the bloc expanded eastward. Bringing these states into the Western fold was an economic, geopolitical and moral triumph for the E.U. and the United States. Poland’s backsliding threatened this progress. Now, its electoral turn further isolates Mr. Orban, showing that his pseudo-democratic authoritarianism is not the wave of the future, and reinforces the E.U. project of sustaining liberal democracy in areas freed from oppression following the Cold War.
Poland, likewise, is critical to military and humanitarian support for Ukraine in its battle for survival against Russia, and Warsaw’s backing for Kyiv ought to be renewed under a new government; in September, Poland announced a halt in arms sales to Ukraine in a dispute over grain exports. It was a political stunt to appease Poland’s farmers, but one that Ukraine can ill afford.
Poland’s voters have cast a decisive vote in the right direction, an inspiring display that shows people’s desire for freedom is not easy to extinguish. The task now is to make the country and its neighbors a bulwark of democratic resilience in an area that lacked liberty for so long.
