WARSAW — The most powerful man in Poland wants the country to know he won’t be around for ever.
One year after a prolonged disappearance from the public stage — caused by what was later reported to be a “life-threatening” health problem — prompted speculation about who would replace him, Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, is back at the top of his country’s politics.
But that hasn’t stopped the 70-year-old former prime minster from dropping hints about his departure, even as he seems set to lead his party to a thumping electoral victory in a parliamentary election on October 13.
His most explicit tackling of the subject took place as he addressed a rural picnic rally in July. “I believe that in four years someone will be standing in my place — because I’m not getting any younger so it certainly won’t be me — [and he] will be able to say, ‘Once again, we’ve fulfilled our promises,’” Kaczyński told the crowd of enthusiastic supporters.
If and when he does depart, Kaczyński will leave a very different Poland thanks to his three decades as one of the country’s most influential politicians. Formally he is only a backbench MP, but in reality he is Poland’s de facto ruler — he hires and fires prime ministers and chose President Andrzej Duda for the job.
“That system that existed before, where the fruits of growth were not equally divided … that system has in large measure been corrected” — Jarosław Kaczyński, PiS leader
He’s had an enormous impact on Poland’s economy, politics, society and foreign relations. The question is whether his footprints will last or be washed away by deeper social changes transforming Poland.
Thanks to a mix of good luck and a boost in spending, Kaczyński has presided over the most prosperous period in Polish history. Unemployment is at a record low, growth rates are among the highest in Europe, and a massive jump in welfare benefits has made millions of Poles wealthier (and keener to vote for PiS).
The government now plays a much larger role in the economy — dominating banking, energy, mining and chemicals — and PiS has purged state-controlled companies, the government bureaucracy, some courts and the state-run media — replacing thousands with party loyalists.
A booming economy has been wrapped in the flag and the cross — a mix of national pride, traditional values and fatter wallets that gives PiS 47 percent support in POLITICO’s poll of polls, leaving its rivals in the dust.
POLAND NATIONAL PARLIAMENT ELECTION POLL OF POLLS
For more polling data from across Europe visit POLITICO Poll of Polls.
“That system that existed before, where the fruits of growth were not equally divided … that system has in large measure been corrected,” Kaczyński told the picnic in July.
Divide and conquer
One of the models Kaczyński cites as a formative influence is Józef Piłsudski — the charismatic leader who helped restore Polish independence in 1918.
Like Kaczyński, Piłsudski was thin-skinned and prone to railing against what he described as feckless politicians and elites. He had no patience for rules and procedures and staged a coup in 1926, then pushed a mix of watered-down socialism and national pride based on the idea that Poland was a great power.
In a 2017 letter to his supporters, Kaczyński called Piłsudski “one of the most remarkable characters in European politics” and added that he saw himself “as a continuator of his thought — of course in very different circumstances.”
Just like his hero, Kaczyński has deeply divided Poland. In the four years since the last election, he’s worked to undermine the political consensus that existed since the end of communism in 1989. He’s a majoritarian democrat — meaning he believes in elections, but has the view that the winning party should be untrammelled by independent institutions like the law courts.
“Kaczyński not only questioned the liberal consensus, he took steps to counteract it,” said Michał Szułdrzyński, deputy editor of the conservative Rzeczpospolita newspaper.
In much the same way that Brexit has split the U.K. and Donald Trump has polarized the U.S., Kaczyński has heightened his country’s divisions. Almost half of the electorate loves him, a similar number despise him — few are ambivalent.
Jarosław Kaczyński attends an anniversary memorial in 2018 to mark the death of his brother Lech | Janek Skarzynski/AFP via Getty Images
The joke when Donald Tusk, the current president of the European Council, was prime minister from 2007 to 2014 was that his main concern was warm water in the tap — meaning he wanted things to be calm and predictable. Under Kaczyński, the water in Polish taps runs boiling hot.
He’s a politician who thrives on conflict. It was Kaczyński who helped splinter the union of democratic parties that bested the communists in 1989. He blew up his short-lived 2005-2007 government by turning on his smaller coalition partners.
He turned the 2010 air disaster that killed his twin brother, President Lech Kaczyński, into political rocket fuel by implying that there was some sort of conspiracy behind what investigators found was an accident. What had briefly been a moment of national unity over the tragedy became a chasm that still splits the country.
From 2015, despite PiS holding the presidency and an absolute majority in parliament, Kaczyński was unwilling to move within the confines of the law and convention by slowly appointing judges more to his liking. Instead, he launched a frontal attack on the judicial system that has turned Poland into a pariah in the EU.
“There will be no gay marriage and especially the adoption of children” — Jarosław Kaczyński
The same thing happened in parliament. There PiS has the votes to get any piece of legislation it wants adopted, but rather than follow procedure, the party rams through important bills in just days, sometimes limiting opposition comments to speeches lasting just 30 seconds.
In the current election campaign, Kaczyński aims to galvanize his voters by focusing hostility against LGBT people as enemies of traditional Polish values.
“There will be no gay marriage and especially the adoption of children,” Kaczyński told a party rally last month. “Instead, in Poland there will be freedom, freedom not limited by political correctness.”
Although Kaczyński has built his political power on an appeal to traditional values, there’s little that’s traditional about the man himself. He’s a lifelong bachelor who lives in a family house in a north Warsaw suburb with his cats — Fiona, Czaruś and occasionally Feliks. He’s alone now. His lifelong attachments were to his twin brother — his death left Kaczyński in shock and on medication — and his mother, who died in 2013. Late at night, he unwinds by himself, watching rodeos on TV.
Iron fist
Even as Kaczyński divided Poland along ideological lines, he has made sure PiS stayed united behind him. His departure would likely trigger a power struggle between competing factions of his party.
Since creating PiS with his twin brother Lech in 2001, he’s ruled it with an iron fist, building it into a party that spans from the center right to the extremes of Polish nationalism — united primarily by the force of his personality and the exercise of personal power.
Kaczyński has never allowed an independent baron to arise within the party — anyone who gets too powerful is quickly cut down to size. Rebels are expelled. The obsequious rise, but last only as long as they don’t challenge the leader.
His power over his followers was demonstrated a few weeks ago, when senior figures from the party tripped over themselves in their eagerness to say that he’d make a much better prime minister than the current incumbent Mateusz Morawiecki — handpicked by Kaczyński for the job.
“Kaczyński created PiS as a very broad tent. It only functions because of his authority” — Michał Szułdrzyński, deputy editor of the conservative Rzeczpospolita newspaper
Even Morawiecki joined in, saying: “I think that Chairman Jarosław Kaczyński would be superb and the best prime minister.”
Those ritual displays of subservience would end once Kaczyński lets go of the reins.
“Kaczyński created PiS as a very broad tent. It only functions because of his authority,” Szułdrzyński said. “Without him, its internal contradictions will tear it apart.”
A post-Kaczyński era would set off a scramble for power that could shatter the party.
The top three contenders seen as likeliest to wage a battle to take over the party are Morawiecki, Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro and former Interior Minister and current MEP Joachim Brudziński.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki | Radek Mica/AFP via Getty Images
Morawiecki, a former banker who was once an adviser to Tusk, is seen as a pro-business centrist without deep roots in the party. Ziobro, who is both justice minister and chief prosecutor, runs Poland’s deep state and is a right-winger closely allied to conservative Roman Catholic groups. But he had a falling out with Kaczyński a decade ago and the party faithful still view him with mistrust. The closest to Kaczyński is Brudziński, but he lacks his boss’s charisma, and now in Brussels he’s removed from the power center of Warsaw.
None of the contenders to replace Kaczyński are able to command a similar loyalty in the ranks. Anyone formally taking over Law and Justice would likely see defeated rivals setting up their own parties. Others, like Deputy Prime Minister Jarosław Gowin, who heads a small center-right party that forms part of the PiS coalition, would probably try their chances at the polls on their own.
“It won’t be a simple takeover,” said Norbert Maliszewski, a political scientist at the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw. “There are too many rival factions, so the likeliest result would be a large rump of PiS and a smaller constellation of rival parties.”
Deep changes
What happens to PiS, and to Poland, will define Kaczyński’s legacy, and determine whether his mix of national pride, traditional values and government-backed economic growth will survive him.
Poland is one of the world’s best economic performers — it last saw a recession in 1992. But Trump’s trade war, the impact of Brexit and a slowdown in Europe could pose a risk to growth and jeopardize PiS’s expensive social programs.
Polish society is also modernizing quickly in its attitudes — a process that continues undeterred by PiS’s appeal to traditional values.
Despite the government’s close alliance with the Catholic Church, Poland is secularizing fast. A survey of 18- and 19-year-olds by the CBOS organization found that 63 percent believed or deeply believed in God in 2018, down from 81 percent in 2008.
Another survey out in the spring found that 58 percent of Poles support a woman’s right to an abortion up to the 12th week of pregnancy (something completely at odds with the country’s tough abortion laws). The latest Eurobarometer poll found that 49 percent of Poles feel homosexuals should have the same rights as heterosexuals. That’s significantly less than in Western Europe, but up 12 percentage points since 2015.
“Kaczyński was able to bring along a part of Polish society that had felt abandoned” — Aleksander Smolar, head of the Stefan Batory Foundation
Kaczyński built a good chunk of his appeal on opposition to immigration; fanning fears of Muslim migrants helped win the elections in 2015. Today, however, Poland is the EU’s migration magnet — issuing 59 percent of the bloc’s work permits for non-EU citizens, according to Eurostat. The overwhelming majority of those go to Ukrainians, but there’s a growing number of arrivals from elsewhere (Indians came third after Ukrainians and Belarusians).
These trends in demography and opinion could cause many Poles to look back unfavorably on a leader who pushed in the opposite direction.
But there’s also the chance that Kaczyński will be remembered fondly. Paradoxically, he could be seen as the man who completed Poland’s modernization project, said Aleksander Smolar, head of the Stefan Batory Foundation, a Warsaw think tank.
The post-1989 rush to ditch communism and build a market economy left many people behind — especially in smaller towns and villages. Throwing open Poland’s doors to Western values also alienated many — principally in the more conservative east.
It was the mix of populist economic policies and national pride pushed by Kaczyński that provided those people the feeling that they were included in the mainstream.
Kaczyński believes that Poland is well on its way to catching Western Europe as an economic powerhouse | Omar Marques/Getty Images
“Kaczyński was able to bring along a part of Polish society that had felt abandoned,” Smolar said.
That seems to be the way Kaczyński would like to be remembered. Speaking at the picnic rally in July, he promised that Poles would catch up to Western Europe — and they’d do it on their own terms.
He pledged that Poles will be able to say: “It happened, we are a wealthy country, in no way worse than those in the West, and on top of that we have equality.”
“To achieve that we don’t have to copy those in the West,” he added. “We don’t have to stand under the rainbow flag, but under Poland’s red and white banner.”