Tony Connelly, Europe Correspondent, looks ahead to what impact Poland's change of government is likely to have on internal economic fortunes and foreign relations with Europe and beyond
There is no doubt that both in style and substance the new government in Poland will be a sharp change in direction from the so-called ‘moral revolution’ led by the Kaczynski twins, Lech (president) and Jaroslaw (prime minister).
Civic Platform (PO) is, admittedly, socially conservative, but it refrains from the more abrasive style of its defeated rival Law and Justice (PiS).
It will diverge most dramatically in its economic and foreign policy.
‘Law and Justice spent so much time accusing businesses of corruption that in the end they were very business-unfriendly,’ says Prof Lena Kolarska-Bobinska, director of the Institute of Public Affairs.
‘The Kaczynskis were left-wing economically, but right-wing in their rhetoric.’
That meant an emphasis on a social safety net, opposition to any cuts in social welfare spending, and the promise – though never implemented - of state-guaranteed housing loans.
The victorious PO, on the other hand, will have a much warmer relationship with business. It has a tax-cutting privatisation agenda. The party has spoken in the past of a 15% flat tax and would like to privatise health care.
In the last week of the campaign, Donald Tusk spoke several times of how Poland, as a new EU member, needed to follow the example of Ireland and emulate the success of the Irish economy.
Politically he may have a clear run to do so. For the first time since the collapse of communism, a Polish government is not composed of a left wing party.
But there will be challenges: Law and Justice will provide a formidable opposition block with their 31% of the vote, and Lech Kaczynski remains president until 2010 with considerable veto powers.
PO, probably in coalition with the small Polish Peasant Party (PSL), will need a three-fifths majority to overcome a presidential veto.
On foreign policy, PO will be radically different in style, if not in substance, from PiS. It will immediately seek to re-establish warmer relations with Brussels after the combative approach of the Kaczynskis; a first visit to Berlin may well be on the cards, since in the early part of the campaign PiS pursued a anti-German tone.
PO has hinted it might withdraw Poland’s 800 troops from Iraq next year, but it is unlikely to do it in a way that antagonises Washington.
The same applies to the controversial missile defence system the US want to install in eastern Europe. Poland will still accept it – much to the annoyance of Moscow – but it is likely to push for a harder bargain from the Americans.
So who is Donald Tusk, now the leader of 38 million Poles?
Like most post-Communist political leaders in Poland he is part of the Solidarity generation which came to power as the Berlin Wall collapsed. Born in Gdansk, spiritual home to the legendary trade union, he was a student activist against the Soviet-backed regime, later losing his job in a government firm.
A history graduate, he spent seven years as a labourer, at one point painting the huge chimneys which were part of a local power station. He is married with two children and recently moved to Warsaw to contest the election from the capital.
He is seen as an economic reformer, pro-European and prone to compromise. His unexpected defeat in the 2005 parliamentary elections and subsequent loss in the presidentials the same year – which ushered in the Kaczynski era – marked him out as someone who, perhaps, lacked the killer political instinct.
But his last minute performance as a passionate fighter for the concerns of ordinary Poles in two televised debates for the 2007 poll has prompted many observers to think again.
- Tony Connelly in Poland
RTÉ News: Polish Elections 2007
