Kaczynski takes it!
Lech Kaczynski, Warsaw's mayor, won Sunday's election for Poland's president, marking a second unexpected success for his Law and Justice party (PiS) following its narrow parliamentary victory. Official results on Monday showed Mr Kaczynski won 54.04 per cent of the vote, beating Donald Tusk of the Civic Platform party (PO) who took 44.5 per cent.
Law & Justice won 155 seats in the country's 460-seat parliament, while the Citizens' Platform won 133 seats. Turnout stood at 51 per cent. Mr Tusk had earlier conceded defeat as exit polls showed him trailing. "Today I must tell myself I did not make it," he said. Addressing hundreds of cheering supporters, Mr Kaczynski said: "Poland needs an accounting of past faults but Poland also needs accord. I turn to our friends in Civic Platform so that we quickly conclude work on forming a government."
Mr Kaczynski's apparent victory clears the way for what is likely to be an ambitious project to break with the tradition of the last 16 years of Poland's transformation to capitalism, which began with the 1989 negotiated surrender of the then-ruling Communist party. Mr Kaczynski and PiS have long felt the deal with the Communists was flawed as it allowed many ex-apparatchiks to trade in their access to cash and contacts for quick riches as newly minted capitalists. They want to reform the country with a new constitution and a new, moral approach to governing that ends the corruption scandals, insider dealing and inefficiency that have plagued governments of right and left.
Although both PO and PiS have their roots in the Solidarity labour movement and in the opposition that helped overthrow communism, the two parties have been driven far apart on economic issues. When Poland's ex-Communist left, led by the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), imploded, PiS switched from attacking the left to denouncing PO's liberal economic programme as favouring the rich and hurting the poor. A favourite target was PO's suggestion of a 15 per cent flat tax, which was depicted so negatively by PiS that it helped lead to PO's defeat in the parliamentary vote.
Mr Kaczynski aimed to skim support from both the far right and the populist left. He cosied up to the followers of the virulent nationalist priest Tadeusz Rydzyk and his influential Radio Maria station, while also promising that few key state assets would be privatised and that farmers would get more subsidies, which appealed to supporters of the populist Self-Defence party. Although both candidates ran strong campaigns, in the end Mr Kaczynski's more social approach appealed to voters more than Mr Tusk's economically liberal ideas.
"Kaczynski had much stronger electoral cards because his main programme areas were closer to the electorate," said Tomasz Zukowski, a political scientist at the University of Warsaw. "Tusk's ideas were too far removed from the values of most Poles."