Presidential election in Poland | At the crossroads

The liberal weekly newspaper Polityka puts it bluntly in its headline: "Forward or Regression." If Rafał Trzaskowski, the government candidate, comes out on top on election night, the coalition led by Donald Tusk would receive a significant boost. Indeed, this could break a deadlock . Conversely, a victory for Karol Nawrocki, the candidate of the national conservative opposition, would likely mark the beginning of a development that could lead to the return of the camp led by Jarosław Kaczyński to power within two and a half years at the latest. On June 1, voters will have the decisive say.

The offers of both candidates are on the table, and the support is roughly equal. For a year and a half, there has been a division of power in Poland that essentially calls for its abolition. Poland's directly elected president may not participate in government and does not sit at the cabinet table, but he has a sharp sword that can make life difficult for the other side. He has the right to veto any legislative decision made by parliament, after which a two-thirds majority in parliament is required to pass the respective law. If the head of government and the president come from the same political camp, the momentum of those in power is rarely dampened. If the situation is different, however, the highest man in the state is always tempted to aid the opposition by virtue of his office.

Since the fall of 2023, a fairly broad coalition has been governing, ranging from moderately conservative to left-liberal and even left-leaning positions, but essentially led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk in a liberal-conservative manner. The promise was to address the abuses of the national-conservative government since 2015. A far-reaching judicial reform was to be implemented, women's rights were to be liberalized, and the rule of law and the separation of powers were to be restored. For the opposition Kaczyński camp, President Andrzej Duda now assumed his strategic role, which he played brilliantly in this regard.

The Tusk government was left with two choices: to pursue a course of action that would provoke a series of presidential vetoes, which would have had the advantage of allowing many issues to be fought out aggressively in front of the general public. Or it could play for time and thus rely on the 2025 presidential election. The latter was chosen, and there were several reasons for doing so: the tense political atmosphere between the opposing camps was not to be further inflamed. It was firmly expected that the opposing side would lose support once the sharp polarization of society that they desired flattened and subsided.

Two key voting groups contributed to the success of the Tusk camp over the Kaczyński camp in the parliamentary elections in autumn 2023: young people and women. At that time, there was still some evidence of the violent storm of protest among women that swept through the country in the autumn of 2020 against the incredible disregard for women's rights and pushed the national conservative government to the wall. Little has changed regarding women's rights since autumn 2023, less than promised and expected, because people were wary of the presidential veto and hoped for 2025.

In the first round of voting two weeks ago, Trzaskowski achieved a weak result of just 15 percent among voters aged 29 and under. Kaczyński no longer automatically functioned as a useful bogeyman for the well-educated, urban youth. Even on the streets of Warsaw, a liberal stronghold, one can often hear young voters expressing a desire for something other than Tusk or Kaczyński. The disappointment with the current government camp is unmistakable, and the argument that a Nawrocki victory would be a major setback, especially for the fight for women's rights, holds only limited weight.

Anyone who is committed to women's and minority rights, to emancipatory development, has only one choice on June 1st – Trzaskowski's. Left and left-leaning parties combined received eleven percent of the votes cast in the first round of voting. That's not a bad result in itself, but the divisions between them are undeniable. And a victory for Trzaskowski would be a good basis for escaping the liberal tides into which the Kaczyński years inevitably led. Because painful experience shows: A divided left primarily plays into the hands of the national-conservative right.