Much of Poland\u2019s 21st-century story has been shaped by a rivalry between two men. This week, the pendulum between them swung again. <\/p>\n
Donald Tusk, a grandee of European politics who paved a Westward-looking path for the young democracy as prime minister from 2007 to 2014, completed a remarkable return to the seat of power when he was again sworn in as leader on Wednesday. <\/p>\n
It followed a victory <\/strong>for Tusk over Law and Justice (PiS), the populist party led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who in the eight intervening years had undone much of Tusk\u2019s vision, turning Poland into the troublemaker of Europe and orchestrating an authoritarian transformation of the country. PiS <\/strong>narrowly won the most seats but fell short of a parliamentary majority in the October vote, allowing a Tusk-led coalition to dump the party from office. <\/p>\n But the handover back to Tusk was not a tidy one. He waited two months as PiS scrambled in vain to find a coalition partner. Finally taking to the stage on Monday after winning parliament\u2019s backing to become prime minister, Tusk thanked \u201call those who trusted in this new, wonderful Poland\u2026 and decided to make this historic change.\u201d <\/p>\n The celebratory air was punctured, though, when Kaczynski stormed to the parliamentary podium and exclaimed to Tusk: \u201cYou are a German agent!\u201d \u2013 a repeat of a months-long effort to paint his archnemesis as a puppet of the EU powerhouse. <\/p>\n It was a reminder, if any were needed, that resetting the EU\u2019s fifth-largest nation from its populist course will be a tall order. <\/p>\n But if Tusk is successful in \u201cdePiSifying\u201d Poland, he will create a blueprint for Europe on how to remove the long-lasting effects of populist rule. <\/p>\n The excitement is palpable already; Tusk\u2019s trips to Brussels since becoming Poland\u2019s leader-in-waiting have had a celebratory air, and he was named by the Politico media company this month as \u201cThe Most Powerful Person in Europe.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s seen as a hope for Europe, in the sense that he showed it is possible to win against populists,\u201d Buras said. <\/p>\n \u201cIn the current political context, that\u2019s a very powerful message \u2013 one of the few optimistic messages that came from the European capitals in the last few years.\u201d <\/p>\n Tusk\u2019s return to domestic politics was greeted in Poland \u201cwith relief in some corners, and disbelief and skepticism in others,\u201d said Jacek Kucharczyk, the president of the Warsaw-based Institute of Public Affairs think tank. <\/p>\n \u201cPeople didn\u2019t believe that he could find the energy to make a difference.\u201d <\/p>\n Instead, Tusk united a disparate opposition coalition and waged what he termed as a battle for Poland\u2019s soul \u2013 a campaign message that intentionally chimed with US President Joe Biden\u2019s effort to topple the world\u2019s other influential Donald. <\/p>\n He had a \u201cpersonal ambition\u201d too, said Buras. \u201cThis rivalry, between him and Kaczynski, has lasted for a very long time,\u201d he said. \u201cHe (wanted) to show Kaczynski that he\u2019s the only politician who is able to win against him.\u201d <\/p>\n Tusk won the latest battle, but Kaczynski\u2019s party is already girding for a war over the future of the Polish state. Eight years of divisive reforms to Poland\u2019s judiciary, public media, state-run companies and cultural institutions are deeply embedded; reversing them all, while also undoing a crackdown on rights for women and LGBTQ+ people, will take money, energy and savvy political maneuvering. <\/p>\n Tusk has promised to undo changes to Poland\u2019s reproductive rights policy that essentially outlawed all abortions in the country. He has pledged support for civil partnerships for same-sex couples, too, and will hope to convince more conservative members of his coalition to back those changes. <\/p>\n But other parts of his agenda will be particularly complex. \u201cPiS has many people in key positions in Poland\u2019s structures,\u201d Buras said. Legal and political experts have long decried many of the party\u2019s changes as unconstitutional, but much of the program has been baked into Polish law and upheld by courts, so Tusk \u201cwill face a challenge,\u201d he said, adding: \u201cHow to restore a rule of law system, without violating rule of law principles?\u201d <\/p>\n Tusk must also learn to navigate Andrzej Duda, the PiS-aligned Polish president whose nominally symbolic role is expected to instead become a major hurdle for the new government. <\/p>\n Duda, whose party faces a tough presidential election in the first half of 2025, has the power of the veto and will be under pressure from the party that campaigns on his behalf to stifle Tusk\u2019s accomplishments. <\/p>\n He \u201cwill most likely oppose any changes conducted through legislative means,\u201d Kucharczyk predicted. <\/p>\n Tusk\u2019s next major obstacle will be the courts, where PiS dramatically altered the system to give itself far greater control over appointing and removing judges. <\/p>\n So-called \u201cneo-judges\u201d \u2013 new judges appointed with the involvement of the National Council of the Judiciary, a body that PiS imbued with increased powers, to the chagrin of the EU \u2013 still sit on the country\u2019s highest courts. <\/p>\n \u201cThe changes were made in breach of the constitution, and (Tusk\u2019s) ruling coalition doesn\u2019t have a sufficient majority to change the constitution,\u201d said Jaroslaw Gwizdak, a former court president who quit his role in protest at PiS\u2019 changes to the judiciary. <\/p>\n October\u2019s election was greeted with a rare joy in Europe; the victory of Tusk, a titan of EU politics who led the European Council from 2014 to 2019, promised to usher in a new era of cooperation between Poland and the bloc. <\/p>\n It could also accelerate a shifting of the balance of power eastwards from Paris and Berlin. <\/p>\n Tusk promised on Monday that \u201cPoland will regain its position as a leader in the European Union\u201d during his tenure. He will be expected to secure the release of billions in funding that Brussels had blocked over Poland\u2019s changes to the rule of law. <\/p>\n Warsaw will be expected to continue its role as a key advocate for Ukrainian aid, a priority Tusk outlined in his maiden speech Monday. That will make him a crucial ally of the Biden administration, which is facing a battle to keep funding flowing to Ukraine at home while trying to persuade Europe to keep up its commitments. <\/p>\n His warmth towards Brussels will meanwhile further isolate Hungary, the authoritarian member with whom PiS had united in spats with EU leadership. <\/p>\n But how much scope Tusk has to play statesman could be dictated by events at home. <\/p>\n He will face bitter opposition from PiS, a party that will remain a formidable force in politics, over his supposed subservience to Europe \u2013 a key battle line drawn during the election that has remained since. PiS is the largest single party in Poland\u2019s parliament, and its nationalist talking points that promote Catholicism, Polish traditions and sovereignty still reverberate through the country\u2019s media ecosystem. <\/p>\n \u201cThe opposition will be very strong,\u201d said Buras, predicting that PiS and the far-right Confederation \u201cwill try to outcompete each other when it comes to anti-European rhetoric.\u201d <\/p>\n Already, parting blows have been attempted. The former government\u2019s panel on Russian influence \u2013 a much-derided body that critics said was created solely to criticize Tusk\u2019s previous premiership during the campaign \u2013 recommended last month that Tusk be barred from office, PAP reported, a conclusion that was widely anticipated and generally ignored. <\/p>\n And whatever Tusk\u2019s achievements, he will struggle to win the public narrative if he cannot reverse the transformations PiS made to state-owned media. <\/p>\n State-run networks like TVP have become essentially a government mouthpiece in recent years, in the vein of Hungary and even Russia, where the successes of the ruling party are touted ad nauseum. <\/p>\n TVP\u2019s \u201cdistorted and openly partisan coverage\u201d favored PiS during October\u2019s election, according to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which monitored the vote. <\/p>\n Tusk pledged on the campaign trail to reset public television in just \u201c24 hours,\u201d an impossibly ambitious promise that may come back to haunt him. <\/p>\n In reality, reversing a conservative, nationalistic bent that has seeped through Poland\u2019s airwaves will take time. Tusk will need to take on the PiS-created and dominated National Media Council, which was given oversight of Poland\u2019s media sector by the former government. <\/p>\n \u201c(Tusk) is a very ambitious politician,\u201d Buras said, adding that few political agendas in the new year will be as complex as his. <\/p>\n But when making the calculation to return to Polish politics, Buras said, Tusk had \u201creason to believe that he\u2019s the one who can rescue his own party, and also polish democracy. <\/p>\n \u201cThe jury is still out on how he manages to do that; there are lots of pitfalls and problems ahead of him.\u201d <\/p>\n\n Much of Poland\u2019s 21st-century story has been shaped by a rivalry between two men. This week, the pendulum between them swung again. Donald Tusk, a grandee of European politics who paved a Westward-looking path for the young democracy as prime minister from 2007 to 2014, completed a remarkable return to the seat of power when <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":12849,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12848","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} A bold agenda to roll back PiS reforms<\/h2>\n
A vocal opposition<\/h2>\n