Massive Pro-Democracy Demonstrations in Poland Against Right-Wing Government

Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets in Warsaw to demonstrate against the right-wing conservative government. They accuse President Duda and Prime Minister Morawiecki’s government of trying to undermine democracy and make the country increasingly autocratic.

The demonstration, according to Polish media, one of the largest post-Communist Poland has seen, coincides with the celebration of the country’s first post-war free elections, 34 years ago.

The organization estimates the turnout at about half a million people. The crowd of demonstrators in the Polish capital stretches for at least a mile. They carry banners with slogans such as ‘A free European Poland’ and ‘European Union yes, PiS no’, referring to the governing party. There are also demonstrations in other cities such as Krakow.

The right-wing conservative PiS, to which Duda and Morawiecki belong, has held sway in Poland since 2015 and has since introduced controversial reforms to curtail the independent judiciary and try to make life difficult for critical media.

The opposition is afraid that the government will go a step further in the run-up to the elections next fall. President Duda earlier this week agreed to set up a committee that critics say could sideline political opponents of the government.

They can not only receive fines, but also, for example, a ten-year ban from political office. Officially, the commission is intended to deal with public figures who have harmed Polish interests ‘under Russian influence’. However, critics fear a witch hunt on the opposition.

Opposition leader and former Prime Minister Donald Tusk had called for today’s huge demonstration. He was on the podium today together with 79-year-old Lech Walesa. As a leader of the Solidarity movement, Nobel laureate Walesa played a historic role in the overthrow of the communist regime in Poland in the late 1980s. He was elected president of post-communist Poland in the first free elections.

The crowd cheered at the sight of the two former leaders and shouted ‘Democracy! and ‘Constitution!’. Some showed masks of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of the PiS, with the word “disgrace” written over them.

The opposition warned ahead of the march that the upcoming elections may be the last chance to stop further undermining of Polish democracy. They fear that otherwise Poland will take an increasingly autocratic course, as Hungary and Turkey have done in recent years. The organizers see the demonstration as a test to see if the opposition is strong enough to win the elections this autumn.

PiS tried to discourage potential participants in the demonstration beforehand with a controversial commercial showing images of the Auschwitz death camp, including the infamous gate with Work sets you free above it, with the words: ‘Do you really want to walk under this slogan?’. The ad references a now-deleted tweet from a government critic who said Duda and Kaczynski will end up in a “room”. He later said he meant a “cell”.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum said it disapproved of the commercial. “It is a sad, painful and unacceptable expression of the moral and intellectual corruption of public discourse,” the museum said.