- According partial, unofficial results of the presidential election announced on Monday morning by the PKW, Andrzej Duda received 51.21 percent. votes, and Rafał Trzaskowski 48.97 percent There are still no votes from several foreign committees, but according to the PKW “they should not significantly affect the results of the election”
- The first poll results were adopted in Law and Justice with a high degree of uncertainty. Enthusiasm and relief did not appear until late at night, when more poll results and partial data from the PMC began to flow.
- This is the sixth consecutive electoral victory of the Jaroslaw Kaczynski party, who can think with a clear conscience about handing over the helm to his successor
- Certainly, soon after the presidential election, serious changes will be made to the government and the United Right. In the first place, the authorities will want to settle accounts with Jarosław Gowin. It is possible that the PSL or Confederation politicians will take his place in the power camp
- Difficult weeks, if not months, await the opposition and its largest party Civic Platform, whose further future has just become a big question mark
- For Rafał Trzaskowski, this is the first major electoral failure in his political career. How will it affect the most recognizable PO policy today? Destructively, however, will it be an impulse to lead the opposition and lead it, as Donald Tusk once defeated Lech Kaczyński, to electoral victory in the next election?
Andrzej Duda wins the election. What’s next? [RELACJA NA ŻYWO]
In the United Right camp, almost everyone breathed a great sigh of relief when late night from Sunday to Monday, the poll results of late poll and those partial flowing to the National Election Commission began to confirm the advantage of Andrzej Duda and his likely victory in the presidential election. Even during the election evening in Pułtusk, when the exit poll gave the incumbent president an advantage of only 0.8 percent. on Rafał Trzaskowski, one could see quite serious anxiety and even disbelief on the faces of the most important PiS politicians that anything else could happen.
It is not without reason that in Pułtusk, PiS president Jaroslaw Kaczyński himself was missing, who did not believe in electoral victory until late at night. It was the leader of the “good change” who fell the largest stone from his heart when he realized that his grouping had once again managed to beat the opposition. And this means that thanks to Andrzej Duda, the PiS president and his party will be able to sleep peacefully and continue their course for the next three years.
Fears of a failure in the power camp were very high last week. No one in PiS leadership or Andrzej Duda’s staff even wanted to think about what would happen if the current president lost to Rafał Trzaskowski. Most quietly repeated that failure would mean the end of a “good change.” Duda, defeating Trzaskowski, saved PiS and Kaczyński himself from a serious crisis that could lead to the loss of power and serious, also legal, troubles.
Presidential election 2020. What was the turnout?
Time for “good change 2.0”
Law and Justice, thanks to Duda, who in recent years the party president himself did not save and humiliated many times, received another three years to continue the course adopted in 2015.
The PiS politicians we spoke to in the last days of the campaign did not hide that if Duda managed to win, it would be an opportunity to redefine the policy of “good change” and review all programs and promises. In the ruling party, there is also a very strong belief that you will have to “push the pedal” hard and finish what you have failed over the past five years for fear of the election result. It is possible that in the first place the ruling camp will deal with the media market in Poland, which especially in the last week before the second round became one of the main motives of the presidential campaign.
But above all, such a small advantage over the opposition candidate with enormous financial and personal expenses is a serious warning signal for Law and Justice, which will force the ruling party to conduct a serious discussion about why, despite such large social transfers, half of the voters showed the ruling party a red card.
Changes in the coalition?
Certainly, soon after the presidential election, there will be an attempt to carry out major changes in the government and in the United Right coalition itself. First of all, the ruling party will probably want to settle accounts with Jaroslaw Gowin, through which the rebellion over the May correspondence elections almost did not lead to the defeat of Andrzej Duda.
In fact, no one from the PiS leadership has no doubt that after winning the presidential election you will have to change your coalition partner or at least get rid of Jarosław Gowin himself, considered by Kaczyński to be a traitor. – What happened in May definitely shuts off any further government. If anyone wants to leave along with Gowin, it’s a free way – one of the important PiS politicians tells us.
It is possible that some PSL or Confederation politicians will join the coalition after Govin and his people, although it will be very difficult. For some time, PiS politicians have been working on activists who are reluctant to their leader Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz. The head of the PSL in the first round of presidential elections obtained only 2.36 percent. votes, which disappointed many PSL activists. In an interview with Onet, they say directly: – We cannot rule out anything today, it all depends on the attitude of President Jarosław Kaczyński.
As we found out unofficially, one of the PSL deputies was offered a ministerial position in the government for joining the PiS election. If such a political transfer took place, then Kosiniak-Kamysz’s political future would become a big question mark.
Representatives of the ruling party also quietly held talks with Confederate MPs, but they stalled. As we hear from Confederate MPs, such a political arrangement is currently difficult to imagine, but not impossible. “It all depends on the PiS’s proposal and the political situation,” one of Confederation leaders tells Onet.
Will Kaczynski give you reins?
When the electoral dust settles, important changes can also take place in the ruling party itself. The PiS congress will be announced in autumn, which will elect the new party authorities and the president. Although no one officially admits it, the PiS is talking louder and louder about the possible departure of Jaroslaw Kaczynski himself, who would formally stop running the party, remaining its honorary president.
Will this happen? The politicians we spoke to during the election campaign said that much would depend on the outcome of the presidential election. In the event of a loss, such a scenario would be impossible. But in the case of winning, nothing prevents the PiS from experiencing a real revolution and a generational change, which in three years could fight with new freshness for victory in the next parliamentary elections.
What next with the Platform?
The victory of Andrzej Duda means that the opposition will face very difficult weeks now, not months of internal settlements and looking for those guilty of electoral failure. The most difficult situation is of course the Civic Platform, which once again was not able to defeat Law and Justice in an electoral battle. Trzaskowski’s hiding the party sign and appealing to the sense of community and civic slogans did not help. The freshness effect, which was very visible at the very beginning of Trzaskowski’s campaign, which replaced Małgorzata Kidawa-Błońska in mid-May, did not help either.
Certainly no one from Trzaskowski’s staff will want to be the face of failure. Interestingly, when Onet was preparing the profiles of Trzaskowski’s staff, some of them already openly admitted that in the event of an electoral failure they did not want all the wine to fall on them. Probably on Monday the platform will start settling and looking for the answer to the question: why did we lose again?
This question is currently the most difficult to answer the head of PO Boris Budka, because these elections showed that the generational change in the Platform did not have a decisive impact on the final election result. In addition, questions will begin about the further sense of the opposition’s duration in today’s formula, in which PO is its unquestioned leader. Some PO politicians speak with Onet directly: in the event of Rafał’s defeat, the future of the Civic Coalition will continue, and who knows and maybe our formation itself will become a big question mark.
Both the Platform and the entire opposition will probably be waiting for a major reconstruction, for which there will be quite a lot of time, as much as three years, until the next parliamentary elections. The unanswered question is whether Szymon Hołownia will join the game for the government of souls on the opposition side, who – as the voting in the first round has shown – can turn out to be a serious threat to the current Platform.
Certainly, the regrouping of opposition forces will not be favored by the PiS, which probably will not fail after the success of Andrzej Duda to try to recapture the Senate, dragging several senators to his side to take full control of parliament again.
If Kaczyński managed to regain the Senate, then the head of PO Boris Budka would be in great trouble, who can be sure that the political head of the Platform will soon start playing with Grzegorz Schetyna’s hands.
What next with Trzaskowski?
Rafał Trzaskowski will return from the election leave to the capital city hall, where he will have to swallow the first such serious defeat in his political career. Many probably in the PO wonder how it will affect the most popular opposition policy today.
Until now, Trzaskowski has easily won all the elections in which he participated. Many hope that Trzaskowski can repeat the path taken by Donald Tusk, who in 2005 also lost the race for the presidency with Lech Kaczyński, to become a “political killing machine” two years later and lead the party to victory and seize power. The only question is, will Trzaskowski be able to rise after such a leveled fight?
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