Index – Abroad – The right wing is eating itself before our eyes

The right-wing conservative Law and Justice (PiS), which maintains a close alliance with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, and the parties to the right of Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s party, which are running in an electoral alliance with him, have been in such a good position politically for a long time since their defeat in the election last October and then becoming an opposition party in December.

• the Polish farmers’ protests cannot be handled by the government led by Donald Tusk;
• most of the promises made for the first hundred days of Tusk’s administration have not been fulfilled;
• moreover, there are also tensions within the government coalition due to the local government elections, where at the moment it looks like there won’t be together they start

Thus, for the first time in a long time, PiS could find itself in an offensive position instead of a defensive one, while storm clouds are slowly gathering over the head of Kaczynski, who leads the party alliance, due to the use of the Pegasus spy software.

Back in mid-March, Patryk Jaki, the deputy president and EP representative of the right-wing far-right nationalist Sovereign Poland (SP), which is running in alliance with PiS, joined forces with former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.

Jaki, who campaigned for the municipal elections in April, accused Morawiecki and the leadership of PiS among his party sympathizers, among other things, of the fact that the majority of the party alliance in the Szejm was due to their flawed policies, and they ended up in the opposition after eight years. He also accused the former prime minister of being too lenient with the European Commission’s environmental protection proposals, which he believed harmed Polish farmers.

The Deputy President of Sovereign Poland put it exactly as follows

all the shit was signed by someone in the European Union

– thus clearly referring to Morawiecki, who as prime minister represented Poland in the European Council, which brings together heads of state and government.

Piotr Müller, the former spokesman of the PiS government, first reacted to Jaki’s accusations, who said that Jaki was distorting the much more nuanced reality. He also accused his colleague of believing that he outgrew party leader Kaczynski, former prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki and president of the republic Andrzej Duda. For this reason, he asked you to raise your concerns in the appropriate internal forums.

Later, more PiS and SP representatives entered the debate, but even Morawiecki, who was addressed, and even President Duda himself reacted to the accusations leveled against them.

And the crises in PiS and the Polish right are deepening more and more.

Cracks within PiS

We have already reported that many people on the right side of Polish politics have already started to position themselves, as they believe that the 74-year-old Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who has been involved in politics throughout his adult life, will not run again for the party presidency in the next parliamentary election, which will be held in November 2027 at the latest. in the competition, he retires and retires to his cats – partly because of the current internal conflicts, the party leader claims that he has no intention of leaving politics yet.

Nevertheless, this does not mean that the positioning and internal struggle for the future leadership of the right-wing party has not started in PiS and the parties allied with PiS – moreover, this is happening right in front of the public.

After the October elections, many members of PiS believed that the party’s leadership and Kaczynski, who was promoted in the campaign, were responsible for the defeat. During the campaign, it was spectacular that, compared to the 2010s, Kaczynski is able to give much more tired and energized speeches, he is no longer able to cheer up the crowd as he did in his heyday.

Moreover, with his speeches, Kaczynski only aimed at the base voters of the party, he is unable to appeal to new voters, especially young people, which was coupled with a bad campaign strategy based only on discrediting Donald Tusk.

Mateusz Morawiecki openly stated that he would like to be the leader of PiS, but at the same time stated that as long as Kaczynski feels he can lead the party and unite the right wing, he is the face and fist of the party.

Next to him, Andrzej Duda, who is planning for the times after his mandate as president of the republic, which expires in 2025, also started a quiet campaign alongside him. Last year, he appointed Marcin Mastalerek, an expert in political intrigues, who had already criticized Kaczynski as his chief of staff. In addition, by asking Morawiecki to form a government after the election, even though he was certain that his government would not be voted for by the Sejm, the head of state weakened one of his potential successors.

Within the partyMorawiecki’s predecessor as prime minister, Beata Szydlo, as well as the current PiS faction leader and former defense minister, Mariusz Blaszczak, are emerging as possible successors – the latter also enjoys Kaczynski’s trust, as he himself nominated him to lead the faction.

While Morawiecki and Duda both belong to the conservative, Christian Democratic group of the party, Blaszczak is a member of the centrist-center-right group characterized by Kaczynski, while Szydlo represents the more radical, hard-line Eurosceptic, extremely religious wing of the party.

Then Ziobro and Sovereign Poland enter the scene

In parallel with the quiet party presidential race, which has been taking place behind the scenes so far, there are also tensions and problems within the party:

The reason for this is that after the October elections, PiS got involved in battles that it was certain it would lose: such was Morawiecki’s first attempt to form a government, which was doomed from the start; and then the Polish public media, the TVP case, and the scandal surrounding two of their politicians convicted of abuse of power did not help them either – with regard to the TVP, the vast majority of Poles, apart from PiS voters, believe from the outset that a news channel mocked as TVPiS before the change of government became much more balanced.

At the same time, the noticeably weakened Kaczynskis are now being attacked not only within the party, but also within the party alliance.

– at the same time, these statements are mostly addressed to Morawiecki instead of Kaczynski, since he was one of the faces of the campaign alongside Kaczynski as prime minister candidate.

Jaki, who is currently replacing the president of the Sovereign Poland party, Zbigniew Ziobro, due to health reasons, and their other representatives are, on the one hand, frustrated like their PiS colleagues, because the party alliance is likely to lose the municipal elections on April 7 and then the EP elections in June.

In the October election, while the PiS faction decreased, the Ziobrós participate in the work of the Sejm with almost the same number of representatives, which also helps their narrative that time has passed on the PiS leadership.

The current infighting may be followed by further interesting events in the future: Sovereign Poland, for example, accused Morawiecki and Duda of working to create a joint party – which they both deny – while Kaczynski is also trying to sort out his ranks somehow.

(Cover photo: Mateusz Morawiecki and Viktor Orbán on June 1, 2022. Photo: Nurphoto / Getty Images)