Unrest sweeps Poland

Why Belarus’ western neighbour is increasingly shaken by protests

In May, Poland will be electing a president. A number of candidates will compete for the right to replace Andrzej Duda in this position, but in reality, the choice will likely boil down to just two individuals — Rafał Trzaskowski from the Civic Platform (PO) party and Karol Nawrocki from the United Right group led by Law and Justice (PiS). In essence, Polish citizens are offered a choice of packaging, while the substance of both candidates is roughly the same — they will work not for the benefit of their own country, but strictly in the interests of the West. The results of such policies are continuously felt by ordinary Poles, leading to waves of protests from desperate people across the country.

Between 600,000 and a million people, by various estimates, participated in March of a Million Hearts

Stolen election  

It cannot be said that Poland was previously a tranquil country; turbulent confrontations between the authorities and society had occurred on the streets even before 2020. However, it was just under five years ago that these tensions reached unprecedented levels. It all began with the scandalous summer election, in which Duda allegedly won against Trzaskowski by a narrow margin. The losing opposition team filed over a thousand lawsuits with the Supreme Court, demanding that the election be declared illegitimate. However, in the context of the ruling Law and Justice party’s dominance, the judges ignored those claims.  
The essence of most complaints was that Duda, while serving as president, used state channels to campaign for himself as a candidate. Meanwhile, his competitors found themselves in a clearly disadvantaged position, as the authorities used coronavirus restrictions as a pretext to ban gatherings and campaigning.  
The delayed time bomb exploded in the autumn when Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal announced a tightening of abortion legislation. A wave of demonstrations swept across the country, the likes of which Poland had not seen for several decades. The largest of these — on October 30th — gathered over 100,000 people, with more than 430,000 citizens participating in the protests overall. Quite quickly, those dissatisfied with the rule of Kaczyński’s party began to join the women’s movement activists. Ironically, a genuine uprising erupted in Poland as Belarus was suppressing the last vile sprouts of a colour revolution inspired by Warsaw. Aleksandr Lukashenko notably remarked at the time that the issue of banning abortions was merely a trigger, while the true catalysts of the protest were Duda’s fraudulent victory and the vast divide between a relatively small layer of wealthy Poles and the impoverished population. 

Since that tumultuous autumn, protests have been shaking Poland continuously for several years now, and increasingly, the reasons for enraged crowds taking to the streets are economic rather than political. 

2.5 million Poles live in extreme poverty

Farmers took up the fight. Their main demands included the cancellation of the EU’s green deal, which hampers the proper development of agriculture, and a ban on the import of cheap and low-quality grain from Ukraine. Subsequently, farmers began to feel the impact of the tightening energy crisis and fertiliser shortages enveloping Poland, which were directly linked to the illegal sanctions against Belarus and Russia. This culminated in the ‘invasion’ of Warsaw by an army of 150,000 farmers on March 6th last year and fierce clashes with the police outside the parliament building. This was despite the fact that tractors and other machinery never made it into the city! 

Confrontations between the authorities and society reached unprecedented levels  

Everyone is protesting! 

Over time, the farmers’ protests have become just one part of the widespread discontent with the authorities’ policies. The defeat of the PiS party in the parliamentary elections and the rise to power of Donald Tusk’s government in autumn 2023 sparked only a brief euphoria. Just before the parliamentary elections, which marked the end of PiS’ eight-year dominance, Tusk and his allies — in the wake of discontent with the old government — managed to organise an impressive rally dubbed March of a Million Hearts, which saw participation estimates ranging from 600,000 to a million people. For safety reasons, the police even closed off some streets in central Warsaw. It was also reported that unrest swept in other cities across Poland.

In just the past three months, public disapproval of the actions of Duda, Tusk, and other oppressors of ordinary Poles has been voiced by foresters, healthcare workers, metallurgists, industrial workers, and railway employees. 

Photojournalist Tomasz Gutry was injured by police during the Independence March in Poland

Representatives of each profession have their own motives. For instance, the workers at Huta Częstochowa demanded that one of Poland’s major metallurgical plants not be closed, foresters were dissatisfied with the management of forest lands, and nurses sought higher wages. A telling fact: today, the shortage of nurses in Polish hospitals stands at 72 percent, and 66 percent of those employed are over 55 years old, which poses a potential serious medical crisis in the coming years. Additionally, at the beginning of November, a strike by law enforcement officers affected nearly 20,000 officers across the country and necessitated the hurried deployment of cadets and reinforcements from all over the country to ensure safety during a nationalist march in Warsaw.

Road to abyss

During the election period, the number of protest actions is expected to rise. This is primarily linked to the rapid deterioration of the economic situation. 

The conflict between the people and the elites is exacerbated by the actual collapse of Poland’s industry: foreign investors are fleeing in droves, and struggling companies are showing workers the door. 

Just in the spring and summer of last year, 16,000 workers from 175 enterprises lost their jobs. The longer the confrontation with Belarus and Russia drags on, the worse ordinary Poles feel. The severing of ties with our country has ultimately knocked the Polish economy out cold.
The real tragedy of present-day Poland is that both Civic Platform and Law and Justice — that keep straight-thinking patriotic forces, advocating for the restoration of relations with neighbours, at bay from reaching the political Olympus — only appear to be on opposite ideological poles in words. In reality, both are oriented towards the West, and it seems that ordinary Poles will have no real choice in the upcoming May ‘election’.

FACT

Anti-rating of Polish politicians is topped by current Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who is not trusted by 56.5 percent of those surveyed by Poland’s national sociological institute.

By Anton Popov