|
波蘭大選結果：執政黨拔頭籌；在野三黨獲多數 -- Jan Cienski
|
瀏覽607 ｜回應1｜推薦1 |
|
|
|
Opposition wins Polish election, according to exit poll
If vote counting confirms the result, it would mark a dramatic change of direction after a very hard-fought election campaign.
JAN CIENSKI, 10/15/23
WARSAW — Poland’s opposition parties look like they’ve won a solid victory in the country’s general election — and if the result holds it signals a radical change both in Poland and in the EU, where the current Law and Justice (PiS) party government has warred for eight years with Brussels over accusations it’s backsliding on the bloc’s democratic rules.
According to a final exit poll released Monday afternoon that takes into account early vote counting, PiS had 36.1 percent support, followed by the centrist Civic Coalition with 31 percent, the center-right Third Way with 14 percent, the Left with 8.6 percent and the far-right Confederation with 6.8 percent. In 2019, PiS won 43.6 percent of the vote. The poll was conducted by IPSOS and was shared with Poland’s three main television networks.
Although Law and Justice party came first in terms of support, it is a Pyrrhic victory as the three leading opposition parties would have a majority of seats in the 460-member parliament.
Turnout was 72.9 percent, according to the exit poll — a record.
It’s a stunning defeat for PiS, which has been in power since 2015.
The party mobilized the full resources of the state to help it win, and it was also strongly backed by state media — which are firmly in the ruling party’s camp. However, PiS was hobbled by a growing number of scandals — including allegations that officials were selling visas for bribes. Eight years of tensions and social conflict, with fights over abortion, rule of law, grain imports from Ukraine, and awful relations with the EU, which has frozen the payout of billions over rule of law worries, also eroded support for PiS.
Even a last-minute referendum with four tendentious questions designed to make the opposition look bad failed to galvanize PiS voters; the referendum fell short of the 50 percent participation rate needed to be counted.
PiS looks set to win too few seats to take a majority in parliament even it if combines with Confederation — which has said it won’t form a coalition with Law and Justice. The three other parties have pledged to work together to oust PiS.
According to the final exit poll, Law and Justice would win 196 seats, Civic Coalition 158, Third Way 61, the Left 30 and Confederation would take 15.
The three leading opposition parties would have 249 seats in parliament, while PiS and Confederation would have 211.
The final vote count is expected by Tuesday morning.
Shock result
PiS leader Jarosław Kazcyński called the result a victory for his party but admitted: “The question before us is whether this success can be turned into another term of office for our government. This we do not know at the moment, but we must hope and we must know that whether we are in power or in opposition, we will carry out this project and not allow Poland to be betrayed.”
He added that his party would work to ensure that its program won’t be abandoned.
Donald Tusk, the leader of Civic Coalition, was ebullient at the result.
“I have never been so happy in my life with this supposed second place, Poland won, democracy won. We removed them from power,” said the former prime minister and European Council president whose return to Polish politics in 2021 proved crucial to the opposition’s hopes.
“We will create a good new democratic government with our partners,” he said, denouncing the past eight years of “evil.”
The opposition promised to rebuild tattered relations with the EU.
“On October 15, Poland is returning to Europe,” said Robert Biedroń, one of the leaders of the Left.
Once the vote count is finalized, the next move belongs to President Andrzej Duda, who has said that presidents traditionally choose a member of the largest party to nominate as prime minister and to take the first crack at forming a government.
Whoever Duda chooses would have 14 days to form a government and to try to win an absolute majority in a parliamentary vote of confidence. If that effort fails, parliament then takes a turn at nominating a prime minster.
The election was marked by one of the most bitter campaigns in Poland’s democratic history.
Kaczyński painted the opposition as posing an existential threat to the nation. He accused Tusk of being in cahoots with Berlin and Brussels to hobble Poland’s independence and let in a flood of migrants from Muslim countries.
The opposition warned that a third PiS term would turn Poland firmly away from liberal democracy by cementing the ruling party’s hold on the judiciary, media and state corporations — moving Poland in the direction of Hungary’s illiberal democracy.
Vote counting is now under way across the country.
“We will be keeping an eye on these elections throughout the night,” Tusk said. “As you know, tens of thousands of people are sitting in the precincts. They are watching, no one will steal these elections from us anymore. We will guard every vote.”
This article has been updated with final exit poll results.
本文於 修改第 1 次
|
|
波蘭新總理上任 -- Sławomir Sierakowski
|
|
|
推薦1 |
|
|
|
What Donald Tusk’s return means for Poland
Poland today is like a ship that needs to be rebuilt while at sea. But will the new prime minister be able to handle the many challenges ahead?
Sławomir Sierakowski, 12/14/23
This week, Donald Tusk won a vote of confidence in Poland’s parliament to lead a new government as the country’s new prime minister, following a failed bid by the incumbent, Mateusz Morawiecki, to remain in that role.
The vote provoked a visibly nervous reaction from the leader of the outgoing populist government, Jarosław Kaczyński, who stormed up to the rostrum to denounce Tusk, a former prime minister who subsequently served as president of the European Council, as a ‘German agent’. Kaczyński’s behaviour since the October election has been all too revealing: the all-powerful national populist leader of the past eight years has lost control — of himself, as well as of the country.
A determined Poland in the EU
Kaczyński can thank his own hateful policies for his electoral defeat on 15 October (following a record voter turnout of 75 per cent). Though his Law and Justice (PiS) party won more seats than any other single party, Tusk has built a broad four-party coalition with a solid parliamentary majority. He is now taking great pains to show his appreciation for his partners, including by creating 26 ministerial positions in the new government.
Tusk’s administration will need to show consistency and unity to deal with Poland’s many crises. After years of PiS illegally packing major judicial institutions with political cronies, a top domestic priority is to restore the rule of law. Tusk also promises a ‘return to Europe’, prompting celebrations across the European media, especially in Germany, a key neighbour with which Kaczyński had been picking absurd fights.
Paradoxically, the PiS government was generally an easy partner for Germany, since it isolated Poland within the European Union. While Tusk’s victory was greeted with joy in Berlin, German leaders surely know they will be dealing with a serious, seasoned player who will defend Poland’s interests more effectively than PiS ever did.
In his exposé (a speech outlining the new government’s plans), Tusk looked directly at PiS’ parliamentary deputies and made clear that no one in the EU will be able to push him around. In doing so, he took the air out of PiS’ aggressive propagandising about him being subordinate to Berlin, and he sent a clear signal to both the German and French governments. He has already announced that he will oppose proposed EU treaty changes designed to remove the unanimity requirement, warning against ‘naive, sometimes even unbearable Euro-enthusiasm’ behind efforts to ‘change the character of the EU’.
A stronger security strategy
In terms of foreign policy, Tusk says he will focus primarily on maximising support for Ukraine from Poland and other EU and NATO states. He did not mince words: ‘I cannot listen to politicians who talk about being tired of the situation in Ukraine. They are tired, they say it to the face of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Poland’s task is to loudly and firmly demand that the West fully resolve and help Ukraine in this war.’ There was a clear message here for Hungary’s pro-Kremlin prime minister, Viktor Orbán, whom Tusk knows well and once considered a friend.
Still, Tusk also declared that his government will show ‘cordial and benevolent assertiveness when it comes to Polish interests’ on the Polish-Ukrainian border, where Polish truckers have set up blockades to prevent their lower-paid Ukrainian counterparts from entering. Tusk says he will offer an immediate solution to this problem, which is destroying the Ukrainian economy.
On the fraught issue of immigration, Tusk showed during his stint as president of the European Council that he has a strong, principled position on the matter. His policy can be summed up as ‘Borders First!’. All borders must be secured before a properly functioning migration and asylum system can be established, though the authorities can ‘protect the Polish border and be humane at the same time’. His government intends to seal the border but also to end the illegal practice of ‘push-backs’, which has cost the lives of more than 50 people on the Polish-Belarusian border in recent years.
The importance of this issue is underscored by the fact that Tusk already has plans to fly to Tallinn and meet with the prime ministers of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. They have many of the same priorities: dealing with the war in Ukraine, securing their borders (all are targets of a Russian and Belarusian hybrid war that includes funnelling immigrants over their borders) and strengthening their cooperation with like-minded governments.
In his exposé, Tusk made sure to mention Finland, signalling a stronger focus on NATO’s northern front. During Tusk’s first government, Radek Sikorski (who is returning as head of the Foreign Ministry to rebuild Poland’s ruined diplomacy) and Sweden’s then-prime minister, Carl Bildt, forged a special relationship. Now, Tusk wants to do the same within NATO. It is a sensible strategy, since he cannot hope for cooperation within the Visegrad group, owing to populist spoilers like Orbán and Slovakia’s new prime minister, Robert Fico.
Poland today is like a ship that needs to be rebuilt while at sea. The situation is not unlike 1989. The biggest difference is that the economy today is in crisis, rather than in ruins. Still, other challenges are just as difficult, if not more so. Back then, Russia (or rather the USSR) was on its knees, whereas now it is waging wars of aggression. There is no Polish politician today who could handle these challenges better than Tusk.
本文於 修改第 1 次
|
|
|
本城市首頁
看回應文章
等級：8
