“A crucial moment in the history of our homeland is approaching. » With these words Donald Tusk, former Polish Prime Minister, described the demonstration this Sunday. According to the city hall, 15 days before the parliamentary elections, at the call of the opposition, people gathered in the center of Warsaw at the start of a large anti-government march.
“When I see these hundreds of thousands of smiling faces, I feel that a crucial moment in the history of our homeland is approaching,” Donald Tusk, former prime minister and former president of the European Council, said at the start of the march. became the leader of the centrist Civic Platform (PO) bloc.
Against the Eurosceptic nationalists in the government
The demonstration aims to mobilize people from across the country, which has been ruled by Eurosceptic nationalists for eight years. The “March of Million Hearts,” as Mr. Tusk called it, began at 10 a.m. and filled the main streets in the center of the capital with dense crowds. It will be “one of the biggest events” in Poland’s modern history and part of the “biggest demonstrations in Europe in recent years,” Mr. Tusk assured.
“They will not intimidate us, they will not silence us. It is important that the whole of Poland sees that no one is afraid of them anymore,” he said on Thursday during a public meeting in Elblag (North), targeting the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party.
On Sunday, PiS leaders are holding their own rally in the southern city of Katowice.
“Our freedom is restricted”
In Warsaw, demonstrators with Polish and European flags and a small white and red heart – the symbol of the centrist coalition – on their chests loudly proclaim their opposition to the government. One of them, Kazimierz Figzal, said it took him seven hours to reach the capital from southwestern Poland. “We are tired of what we are experiencing today. Our freedom is restricted. We want democracy for our children and grandchildren,” the 65-year-old man told AFP.
Speeches from opposition leaders are planned at the end of the march around 1 p.m. Former President and 1983 Nobel Peace Prize winner Lech Walesa had announced his participation.
The nationalist-populist party is at the forefront of voting intentions
Despite numerous conflicts with the European Union and accusations of attacks on the rule of law, PiS, the nationalist-populist party of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, is comfortably ahead in the polls with around 35% of voting intentions. , according to the opinion research institute IBRiS. According to the same study, the Civic Platform is in second place, supported by 27% of voters.
However, according to Tusk, surveys commissioned by his party show that PiS’s lead has recently shrunk to just two percentage points. “Nothing has been decided yet,” he said in Elblag, promising to hold the current authorities accountable at the end of the election. “Many of them will go to prison for theft, for violations of the law and the Constitution,” he stressed.
Bartlomiej Piela came to the capital from Katowice, where a PiS rally is planned, to take part in the opposition demonstration and protest against “what is happening in Poland”. “Breaking basic civil rights and women’s freedom to choose their way of life, playing Poles against each other… I hope that the march will mobilize people to change this,” says the 29-year-old man.