Poland’s governing Law and Justice Party (PiS) has increased its vote share in national elections, despite being hounded by the European Union and the global left.
The populist-leaning national conservative party, which is pursuing a policy programme “far from neoliberalism, and equally far from socialism”, has secured enough votes for an absolute majority in Poland’s Sejm — equivalent to Britain’s House of Commons — and cleared the soft-left globalist Civic Platform/Civic Coalition (PO/KO) founded by neoliberal EU Council President Donald Tusk by a comfortable margin.
The new right-populist Confederation of Freedom and Independence, or Konfederacja, of which the colourful and controversial Janusz Korwin-Mikke is a co-founder, also made something of a surprise breakthrough on its platform of tax cuts, staunch euroscepticism, and restoration of capital punishment for the most dangerous criminals, surpassing the 5 per cent threshold required to earn a number of parliamentary representatives — and performing even better among Polish students.
Law and Justice has found success despite a long campaign to undermine it by the European Union and the country’s top court, comprised of judges which Law and Justice see as a nepotistic legacy of the communist era.
The EU clashed with Law and Justice from the moment it turned President Tusk’s party out of office in 2015, with the national-conservative government reversing the previous administration’s decision to submit to the EU’s compulsory migrant redistribution quotas with immediate effect.
The EU intervened heavily in Poland’s domestic politics after this, attempting to frustrate policies including its judicial reforms and a decision to lower the retirement age for women as incompatible with EU law.
But the bloc struggled to impose its will on the Polish government, assisted as it was by like-minded member-state administrations such as that of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.
While Poland has enjoyed strong growth under Law and Justice and become the first post-communist state to achieve “developed market” status, party lawmaker Dominik Tarczyński told Breitbart News that it had not followed the traditional “it’s the economy, stupid” strategy in its election campaign, preferring to focus on “identity” and “safety” — particulary with respect to border security and the migrant crisis, which may be set to reintensify.
“We don’t want Poland to be just a piece of land. We don’t want any other country to be just a piece of land, and a mark on the map,” Tarczyński said, defending the party’s decision to increase support for mothers and eliminate income tax for young people rather than pursue economic growth via mass migration.
“Poland is much more than land itself. Poland is us. We are Poland, and we have to cherish it, we have to fight for it, we have to care about it, we have to think about the future,” he insisted.
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