« Wygrała Polska, wygrała demokracja. » (Poland won, democracy won.)
— Donald Tusk, former prime minister and currently leader of the democratic opposition in Poland, on the apparent victory of opposition forces in Sunday's election in Poland. From Polska Agencja Prasowa.
Today is a great day for democracy. The MAGA-ish Law and Justice Party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość – known by the unfortunate acronym PiS) has been booted out of power after eight miserable years.
Donald Tusk, a good Donald, is the leader of Koalicja Obywatelska (KO) which is the largest of the three pro-democracy groupings who together are projected to win enough votes in the Sejm (the lower house of parliament).
Turnout for this election was about 73%.
This victory by PO and its likely coalition partners Trzecia Droga and Lewnica carries significance similar to Joe Biden's victory in 2020.
Projections made by a reliable exit poll give the pro-democracy parties a total of 248 seats in the Sejm. 231 are needed for a majority. Final results are likely to differ slightly from these numbers.
Oh yeah, there's an extreme rightwing party called Konfederacja which is led by an idiot named Janusz Korwin-Mikke who is a misogynist with pro-Putin tendencies. Konfederacja, in American terms, is somewhat like the House Freedom Caucus – but led by the My Pillow guy or Rudy Giuliani. Fortunately Konfederacja won just an estimated 12 seats.
I'll write about this more tomorrow. But it's not just a victory for democracy but also one for NATO, the European Union, and (probably) Ukraine. Putin can't be very happy about liberal democracy being strengthened next door to him. It halts a trend towards the right in Europe.
This is a reminder to my polish followers to go vote on October 15th.
The political situation in Poland is highly anti-women.
The ruling party has taken away our abortion rights. They need to go.
There's also a radical right-wing party called Konfederacja. Its members think that women should not have the right to vote. They've grown popular, especially among young men. We need to do everything in our power to stop them from becoming a powerful political force. That's why we need to vote. WE HAVE TO VOTE.
In case you are wondring why I never posted any updates on the Oder/Odra disaster it’s because we have no conclusive results.
There was to be joint German Polish investigation but Poland doesn’t want to investigate together. Any questions on their findings is basically “trust me bro” territory.
We still don’t now what killed an entire ecosystem.
In the German-Polish dispute over the environmental disaster that led to the death of millions of fish in the Oder River, the fronts are hardening. The Polish government blocked the work of the bi-national expert commission that was supposed to investigate the cause of the catastrophe.
The Polish side neither shared comprehensive data nor showed any cooperation, criticises Lilian Busse, head of the investigation commission. "In the beginning, we actually exchanged information quite well in the German-Polish group. As things progressed, however, the Polish colleagues became more and more reticent, in some cases almost secretive," says Busse.
From time to time some PiS politicians still claim that Germany poisened the Oder though. Even though Germany is still downstream and hasn’t magically moved upstream. Also Germany bad for bringing up the topic of the dead fish simply to make Poland look bad.
I am so tired of PiS and everyone who votes for them.
The ruling PiS (Law and Justice Party) did not win enough seats in the Sejm in October's national election to form another government.
Poland's PiS President Andrzej Duda tried to slow down the departure of his Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki by dragging out the transfer of power. Duda even asked Morawiecki to try to form a new government despite the obvious mathematical impossibility of doing so.
But time ran out for PiS. Morawiecki lost a vote of confidence in a 10+ hour meeting of the Sejm on Monday. With 456 members voting and 229 needed for a governing majority, Morawiecki lost by a margin of 266 to 190.
After that fiasco, a three party pro-democracy coalition led by former Prime Minister Donald Tusk won a vote of confidence by 248 to 201.
After nine years out of power, Donald Tusk is back — securing the support of the Polish parliament on Monday evening to head a new government.
The vote was 248 in favor and 201 against, cementing his return nearly two months after a coalition of opposition parties led by the former European Council president delivered a surprising win in the October 15 national election.
“I want to thank the Polish people,” Tusk told cheering MPs. “Thank you Poland, this is a great day, not for me, but for all those who for these long years deeply believed that it will still be better, that we will chase away the darkness, chase away the evil.”
The new coalition government officially takes power on Wednesday.
I don't understand much Polish, but went out of my way to see Barbara Nowacka's speech in the debate leading to the votes. She had no qualms about calling out members of the outgoing government by name.
The PiS losers could only listen grimly as she excoriated them and compared them with the autocratic Viktor Orbán régime in Hungary.
Pani Nowacka will likely be the new Minister of Education in Poland.