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Poland will vote on Sunday on whether a political party accused of weakening the country’s democracy can remain in power, but an election seen as the most important in a generation is being marred by concerns that it will only partly free and anything but fair.
Since coming to power in 2015, the right-wing populist Law and Justice party has drawn the ire of allies in the European Union for politicizing the judiciary, turning the media into the party’s mouthpiece and eroding the rights of minorities. Opposition leader Donald Tusk, a former Polish prime minister who is also president of the European Council, has promised to restore the rule of law in Poland and make peace with Brussels.
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After a campaign season filled with heated rhetoric and bitter accusations, polls showed a tight race, with analysts predicting neither side would win a clear majority, likely leading to a coalition government led by one of them.
The outcome will be closely watched across Europe, where diplomatic spats with Poland have become a persistent source of division and fear, as well as in the United States, which has grown closer with Poland since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
But officials and analysts say what Polish voters really want is distortion from state-controlled media, new voting rules and a controversial referendum tied to the vote.
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The election has heightened fears about the health of Poland’s institutions. “We still have a democracy in Poland, but it is thanks to our civil society, non-governmental organizations and local government that the opposition is relatively strong,” said Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, who is affiliated with Tusk’s center-right Civic Platform.
“We can argue that it is still democratic,” he continued. “But of course it’s also completely unfair.”
After eight years of consolidating its influence over the media, with Poland falling from 18th to 57th out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index, Law and Justice was able to rely on disproportionately positive campaign coverage while maintaining the public broadcaster and use a network of regional newspapers to intensify their attacks on the opposition.
The broadcaster Telewizja Polska (TVP), which consists of supporters of the Law and Justice party and received 2.35 billion zlotys ($546 million) in government money this year, devoted 80 percent of its political broadcast time to the ruling coalition and gave only 20 percent to opposition parties, according to monitoring by the Polish National Broadcasting Council in the second quarter of this year.
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TVP has routinely downplayed opposition rallies, including a large demonstration in Warsaw this month. While the city administration estimated the turnout at one million, TVP reported that 100,000 people were present.
And when the ruling party was accused of issuing work visas for large amounts – which contradicted its tough stance on migration policy and led to the resignation of the deputy foreign minister and the indictment of other officials – TVP made the headline: “The opposition is lying.” “intentionally about the visa scandal: Polish Foreign Minister.”
“For months, for years, there has been a constant flow of pro-government propaganda praising the government’s achievements and attacking the opposition in unprecedented ways,” said Piotr Buras, chairman of the European Council on Foreign Relations in Warsaw.
“Public media is an instrument of power,” Buras said. “It is the same tool that was used in the 2019 election, but now it is being used to the extreme.”
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In the lead-up to this vote, Tusk was the No. 1 target, portrayed by Law and Justice leaders as a “personification of evil” and a traitorous renegade representing the interests of Russia – and confirmed by the public broadcaster and Germany over Poland.
In a video clip that was played over and over again, Tusk can be seen saying “for Germany”. But the clip itself was a two-word excerpt from an innocuous message to the conservative CDU in Germany in January 2021 and without any context.
A controversial referendum
The government also caused a stir by holding a referendum alongside Sunday’s general election. According to Human Rights Watch and other European observers, the vote consists of four challenging questions that are not tied to policy proposals but rather aim to garner support for law and justice while spreading misinformation about the opposition.
For example, one question asks whether people want to accept “thousands of illegal immigrants” from the Middle East and North Africa who are “imposed” by “European bureaucracy.” Another question asks whether voters want to dismantle a barrier erected on Poland’s border with Belarus.
Michal Baranowski, executive director of Warsaw-based GMF East, part of the German Marshall Fund, said the referendum was a way to circumvent campaign finance restrictions because it used state resources to disseminate non-neutral election information.
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Using the state apparatus to support a referendum is “another means of financing election campaigns” and “leads to an inequality in the amount of funds used by one side and not the other,” he said.
For the referendum to be valid, 50 percent of voters must take part. Opposition leaders have called for a boycott. Wojciech Hermelinski, former head of Poland’s electoral commission, said he “would be ashamed to take part.”
But simply accepting a referendum ballot that is handed out with the ballot for the general election counts as participation. Voters must actively reject the referendum paper – some observers fear this will discourage people from taking part in the parliamentary vote or endanger the secrecy of the vote.
“There are real concerns,” said Malgorzata Bonikowska, president of the Center for International Relations in Warsaw. “Especially for people who work in the public sector. But also those who work in business.”
Changes to the electoral law
New election rules that took effect in March increased the number of polling places and mandated free transportation on Election Day for older voters and people with disabilities.
The ruling party insists the changes are about improving accessibility. The opposition argues that the measures will only increase voter turnout among older people and voters in rural areas – two demographics that are Law and Justice’s core electorate.
One group that more reliably supports the opposition is expats. More than half a million Poles living abroad have registered to vote in this election – the highest number in the country’s history. However, there is a new requirement that foreign precincts submit their counts within 24 hours of polls closing. Poland’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Marcin Wiacek, warned that this could disenfranchise voters.
Meanwhile, although required by law, the government refused to redistrict electoral districts according to population shifts. This means that people in sparsely populated rural areas have more voting rights. A group advocating that city residents in other districts should vote has calculated that candidates in Warsaw need to win 98,000 votes, while candidates in the agricultural east need just 74,000 votes.
What if the election results are contested? This could be a sign of a further weakening of Polish institutions: the government has restricted the independence of the National Election Commission and the Supreme Court.