CHEŁM, Poland — There are three things that the ruling Law and Justice party wants Polish voters to know before they head off to vote on Sunday — if the party stays in power, Poles will be richer, more secure and they won’t have to give in to demands from homosexuals.
That message was hammered home on Friday night in the party’s heartland in eastern Poland. Hundreds gathered for a boisterous party rally in Chełm, a city of 65,000 just 25 kilometers from the border with Ukraine, where the leadership of Law and Justice (PiS) held their final pre-election rally.
The party is far ahead in opinion surveys — POLITICO Poll of Polls gives it 47 percent, while the leading opposition party, the Civic Coalition, trails at 26 percent. But Law and Justice has to win an outright majority to rule, as the opposition parties haven’t shown any interest in forming a coalition with it — making the drive for votes crucial.
That’s why both big parties spent their last hours on the campaign trail warning voters of the dire consequences of supporting their opponents.
The star of the show in Chełm was Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of PiS and Poland’s de facto ruler, who laid out the stakes of the election in stark terms.
Kaczyński claimed credit for closer relations with the U.S. and the stationing of American troops in Poland.
As the audience chanted his name, he spelled out the positive case for PiS retaining power, telling voters that his party’s program of swiftly raising the minimum wage would allow Poles to first reach the EU’s average GDP per capita (it’s currently about 70 percent of that level), and then catch up to the Continent’s wealthiest countries like Germany.
“The goal is for that eternal Polish complex — that we’re poorer and in a sense you could say worse — that this complex is eliminated,” he said.
The party’s signature program is called 500+, a monthly payment of 500 złoty (€116) per child — which has made an enormous difference to poorer families and locked in their support for the party. That’s been supplemented by lowering the retirement age and boosting pensions.
“The most important thing for me was 500+,” said Monika Woźniak after listening to the speeches. Her mother, Lucyna, said that for her the key factor was adding an extra pension payment for senior citizens. She explained that she had lost her job in the post-communist economic reforms after 1989 and that her life took a turn for the better when PiS won power in 2015.
“They’ve returned patriotism and respect for Poland. Of course I’m going to vote for them,” Monika Woźniak said.
‘Be smarter’
The organization and size of the crowd in Chełm dwarfed the final campaign stop for Civic Coalition in the central Polish city of Łódź. There, about 100 party members gathered on a university patio to cheer the speakers, who didn’t bother going into the specifics of their electoral program.
Instead, they warned of dangers they said would come from PiS winning another four-year term.
Małgorzata Kidawa-Błońska, the coalition’s candidate for prime minister, argued that PiS has changed the country for the worse in the last four years.
“Scorn best describes their government. Be smarter than them, say ‘Enough of the dictatorship of one man,'” she said.
“This is the end of the campaign and this is the moment of mobilization,” Kidawa-Błońska told POLITICO after the event.
Other speakers like Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski stressed that if the opposition takes power it won’t scrap PiS’s popular social welfare programs.
“We can have 500+ and also clean air. We can have 500+ but without chaos in education,” he said.
POLAND NATIONAL PARLIAMENT ELECTION POLL OF POLLS
For more polling data from across Europe visit POLITICO Poll of Polls.
But in Chełm, PiS leaders claimed that the opposition would cut away programs like 500+.
“Can you believe those who change their views every day? I don’t believe them,” said former Prime Minister Beata Szydło, now a member of the European Parliament. “It’s worth voting for Law and Justice.”
Kaczyński also claimed credit for closer relations with the U.S. and the stationing of American troops in Poland. “They are here to stay,” he reassured his audience. Neither he nor the other speakers mentioned Poland’s problems with the EU, despite accusations that from EU institutions that the country is backsliding on democracy and improperly politicizing the judiciary.
Then Kaczyński changed tactics, warning that there are dangers lurking for Poles. The party would defend “normal families,” Kaczyński thundered, returning to PiS’s electoral strategy of attacking LGBT people.
A Civic Coalition poster in Warsaw | Sean Gallup/Getty Images
“Homosexual marriages, the adoption of children by so-called civic partnerships — we won’t allow it,” he said. “We are the guarantors of the defense of the Polish family, Polish values, the guarantor against attacks on the Polish church — and also people of other faiths.”
Jacek Sasin, the deputy prime minister and the parliamentary candidate for Chełm, put it more colorfully during a chat with the right-wing Radio Maryja earlier Friday, saying: “We have to protect Polish homes from the rainbow-hued hordes.”
Voting for the opposition puts all those gains at risk, Kaczyński warned. “Our opponents dream of a return to power, of a return to their old benefits … they also dream of a great revolution, of a lifestyle revolution, shattering families, shattering our identities.”
Despite that rhetorical effort, not everyone in the audience was convinced.
“I’m still undecided,” said Marta Twardowska-Król as she put on her coat to go out into the chilly evening. “I’m a bit worried about what will happen if PiS wins again. I don’t know how employers will survive those calls to raise the minimum wage. A lot of people could lose their jobs.”
Zosia Wanat reported from Łódż.