WARSAW — Poland’s general election next month could be decided by a far-right party that entices voters with libertarian visions of a low-tax future by raining fake money during rallies. Its past pronouncements, however, carry a far darker message.
The Confederation party’s election program smacks of a “Mad Men” version of 1950s America.
“A barbecue, a family, a house, two cars, a safe Poland free of immigrants, free enterprise and a country that allows every working Pole to succeed,” said Michał Urbaniak, a party leader from the northern city of Gdańsk.
Upending the status quo should happen by deregulating life as much as possible, Confederation says in its manifesto titled “The Constitution of Freedom.” That’s a message that’s supposed to appeal not only to an old guard of hard-rightists but also to a younger libertarian set, including students.
It calls for simplifying and lowering taxes, making the health care system rely on “market competition” thanks to giving people an annual coupon worth 4,000 złoty (€895) and a frequent use of the veto in EU negotiations to rein in what the party says is Brussels’ insatiable appetite to expand its powers, such as by imposing an “ideological climate policy.”
The party wants to liberalize access to firearms and ban abortion, including in cases of rape. It also grumbles about the burden placed on Poland by millions of Ukrainians fleeing the war and demands that Kyiv be held to account for wartime massacres of Poles by Ukrainian guerillas.
Fundamentally, Confederation promises to break with the two parties that have dominated Polish politics for more than two decades — the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party led by Jarosław Kaczyński that’s now in power, and the liberal Civic Coalition headed by former Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
Fratboys
“Confederation has long positioned itself as an anti-establishment force, promising to upend Polish politics and challenge the status quo,” said Jakub Jaraczewski, a research coordinator for Democracy Reporting International, a Berlin-based NGO.
That’s a message that seems to be resonating with voters.
In POLITICO’s Poll of Polls, Confederation is in third place with 11 percent support, behind the two older parties. With the ruling PiS party currently polling at about 38 percent, the obvious question is whether it can or will strike a deal with Confederation to stay in power.
Confederation itself — a grouping of smaller far-right outfits — carries a lot of baggage that could keep a lid on its further rise.
When it first ran in the 2019 election for the European Parliament, party leader Sławomir Mentzen laid out a five-point program: “We don’t want Jews, homosexuals, abortion, taxes and the European Union.”
He’s since tried to distance himself from those remarks.
One of the party’s candidates, Ryszard Zajączkowski, a university professor, has said Poles were subjected to “genocide” at the hands of Jews working together with communists after the war and said that communism is much worse than fascism: “Compared to which the Auschwitz camp could be called a holiday camp.”
While the bulk of the party’s leaders are youthful libertarians, giving off the air of clean-cut campus politicians, they also have members with longer track records.
Janusz Korwin-Mikke, an 80-year-old former member of the European Parliament now running for the party from the Warsaw region, has a history of saying crazy things about women.
One of his nuggets: “I am against voting rights for women. This is biology. A woman at the age of 55, when estrogen stops working, reaches the age when she can finally vote.”
That atmosphere of beer-hall philosophical discussions permeates the party, but it carries risks as Confederation tries for more mainstream appeal.
Natalia Jabłońska was dropped from the electoral list after her earlier musings that laws banning the slaughter of dogs for food weren’t needed because “meat is meat” turned into an embarrassment for the party.
But her views are upheld by former MEP and current MP Dobromir Sośnierz, who noted: “A dog is in no way better than a cow. “
The party’s economic program has come under sustained attack from economist and liberal politician Ryszard Petru, who has held a series of debates with Confederation members and eviscerated the practicality of their ideas.
“They hide under the cover of a light form of liberalism … but when we go deeper it turns out that it’s empty, or else a joke, or not what was intended, or hasn’t been calculated,” Petru said.
The scrutiny appears to be having an impact on the party’s popularity. Confederation’s support is down from 14 percent in July, and one recent Polish poll by United Surveys had the party at 7.8 percent support.
Kingmakers
For now, Confederation could play a key role in the outcome of the election. Law and Justice is trying for an unprecedented third term in office; although it’s in first place in opinion polls, it doesn’t have enough support to win an absolute majority on its own. That means it needs a coalition partner, and the likeliest candidate is Confederation.
Although the two parties differ on the economy — with PiS hewing to a much more socialist policy — they agree on values like rejecting abortion, disdain for LGBTQ+ people, and suspicion of the EU and immigration.
While any coalition deal with PiS would see Confederation’s leaders rewarded with plum posts, the danger is they would alienate the party’s core backers and disappear. As the self-described “sole party representing pro-Polish interests,” it needs to retain anti-system credibility.
“As elections draw near, Confederation appears to be doing more and more of what its voters despise: traditional politics with backroom deals, coalition talks, transfers of deputies and ‘rotten’ arrangements made to hold and maintain power,” Jaraczewski said.
But Krzysztof Bosak, one of Confederation’s leaders, insists that the party won’t make a deal with PiS and will also steer clear of the opposition camp led by Tusk.
“Confederation has no intention of prolonging PiS’s power or facilitating Tusk’s return to power,” Bosak, told Poland’s Radio Zet. “The majority of our voters do not want this.”
He’s right. A new poll found that 57 percent of Confederation’s supporters rule out forming a coalition with any other party.
Both traditional parties are making moves that could interest wobbling Confederation supporters.
Tusk recently placed Roman Giertych, a lawyer who used to lead a far-right party but who has since muted some of his views, on his party’s electoral list.
One of PiS’s new candidates for MP is nationalist rabble-rouser Robert Bąkiewicz, who in the past accused PiS “of crawling before Jews” and who has denounced democracy as “idiotic.”
“It is obvious to me that this is purely a move to strike at us,” Confederation leader Witold Tumanowicz told the Polityka weekly, adding: “They act as if they think that by having him on their lists they will gain the support of the nationalist movement. But this is not the case. Of course, the nationalists do not support them.”
Meet the far-right potential kingmakers in Poland’s election
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