WARSAW — President Bronisław Komorowski’s unexpected defeat in the first round of Poland’s presidential elections has sent his team scrambling for new ideas and dramatic proposals ahead of the runoff a week from Sunday.
Dismissed for months as a no-hoper, the challenger Andrzej Duda comes into the weekend with the momentum and a lead in the last poll released Friday, putting him at 48 percent against 43 percent for Komorowski. The candidate of the right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS) beat the sitting president 34.8 percent to 33.8 percent in last Sunday’s vote.
The hallmark of the new Komorowski campaign is a proposed referendum to change Poland’s electoral system. Currently members of parliament are chosen from party lists drawn up by insiders, and the president says he wants Poland to adopt a UK- or US-style first-past-the-post vote, saying that will bring politicians closer to the people. The Polish Senate, which is controlled by controlled by Komorowski’s Civic Platform party (PO), is racing through legislation to call a plebiscite for September 6. That referendum would also include a measure to end government financing for political parties and lower taxes.
It’s a transparent gambit to appeal to supporters of Paweł Kukiz, the third-place finisher. In an outcome as surprising as Duda’s victory, Kukiz took a fifth of the vote last Sunday. The rock musician and social activist built his movement around a proposal to reform the electoral system, portraying that change as striking at the heart of Poland’s cozy political system. His anti-establishment message caught on with many first-time young voters, which will be hard to win over by the candidate of the Civic Platform, which has ruled Poland since 2007.
Komorowski’s team came in for criticism for running a listless and uninspiring campaign that assumed an easy win. Earlier this year, the 62-year-old president had two-thirds of the vote, according to polls.
As part of his last-minute makeover, Komorowski is trying to broaden his appeal beyond the centrist voters who form the core of PO’s support. He laid a wreath at a monument to Marshal Józef Piłsudski, the restorer of Polish independence after World War I who is revered by nationalists. Then he took a walk with Aleksander Kwaśniewski, the ex-communist who served as president from 1995-2005.
A shakeup in the incumbent’s campaign team has put informal control in the hands of Grzegorz Schetyna. The current foreign minister had at one time been a close ally and friend of Donald Tusk, Poland’s former prime minister and now president of the European Council. Tusk sidelined him in recent years, seeing him as a rival, according to people familiar with the dynamic between them. But Tusk’s departure for Brussels allowed Schetyna to return to a senior government post and now a leading role in the Komorowski rescue effort. “If the campaign had been done well, Komorowski would have won,” Schetyna said. “The result defines the campaign.”
One of the new wrinkles since Sunday is the sudden appearance of Komorowski’s family, which until now hadn’t been part of his political life. His children put out a campaign ad to try to humanize a president portrayed as cold and unfeeling by his opponent.
But Duda is making eyes at Kukiz’s supporters. “If Kukiz is leaving matters in the hands of his voters, I’m appealing to them to vote for me,” he said.
What Kukiz will do is a bit of a mystery. He has said he will not support either man on May 24. “I went to war with the system to overturn the system,” he told Polish radio.
While Duda tries to appeal to Kukiz’s voters by stressing that he too is unhappy with today’s Poland, Komorowski’s will have to galvanize apathetic PO voters who didn’t bother to vote last Sunday. Turnout was just under 49 percent, the lowest ever for a presidential election. Some may not have voted because Komorowski appeared to be a sure bet, which isn’t the case in the second round. Other past Komorowski voters have wearied of the Civic Platform after nearly a decade in office, and will be harder to entice to the polls.
Civic Platform is trying to portray Duda as a proxy for former prime minister and PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński, who spent two turbulent years in power in 2005-2007. Michał Kamiński, a political strategist now working from Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz after jumping ship from PiS, warned, “I’m scared of the people standing behind Andrzej Duda,” while Lech Wałęsa, the legendary leader of Solidarity and former president who generally sympathizes with PO, said if Duda wins, “it will be sorrow for Poland, a revolution.”
But memories of that time are fading, and the 42-year-old Duda wasn’t a major player then. Kaczynski has stayed largely out of sight in this campaign.
Komorowski’s problems are a warning to Kopacz, who took over from the charismatic Tusk last year. She now has to lead her shell-shocked party into parliamentary elections in a few months time. An opinion poll released this week showed the PO as a whole is losing support to the Kukiz insurgency and a new economically liberal party being created by Leszek Balcerowicz, the architect of Poland’s post-communist shock therapy reforms.
Despite admitting that he plans to vote for the incumbent, former President Kwaśniewski told Polish radio that “Civic Platform appears to be used up and exhausted after eight years in power.”
Matthew Kaminski speaks to Jan Cienski about the Polish presidential runoff on POLITICO’s In the Loop podcast, Polish edition.