Poland’s newly elected Law and Justice party government named some of its more controversial figures to senior ministerial posts on Monday.
Beata Szydło, Law and Justice’s nominee to be prime minister, announced her lineup in Warsaw on Monday, sharing the stage with her conservative party’s founder and former Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński, a divisive figure in Polish politics.
The presence of Kaczyński at the unveiling and the makeup of the government suggest the party, which secured an unprecedented absolute majority in last month’s parliamentary elections, feels less need to project the moderate image it cultivated during the recent campaign.
Antoni Macierewicz was chosen to be defense minister, despite campaign promises that he wouldn’t get the job. Macierewicz, a leading figure in the anti-communist opposition before 1989, served as deputy defense minister during the party’s previous brief stint in power from 2005-2007.
During that time he was responsible for abolishing the military intelligence services, which he said were filled with communists and Russian agents. In the report that he filed following the service’s dissolution, many people who were named as collaborators later successfully sued the government for libel.
Macierewicz built up a powerful position on the right of Polish politics by becoming a close ally of the ultra-Catholic Radio Maryja radio station. He was also an exponent of the theory that the 2010 airline disaster that killed Lech Kaczyński, Poland’s president and Jarosław’s twin brother, as well as many other senior officials, was an assassination, not an accident as Polish and Russian investigations found.
He will play a key role in the new government at a time when Poland is ramping up its defense spending above 2 percent of GDP and modernizing its military in response to the perception of a growing threat from Russia. Many of the contracts, ranging from attack helicopters to air-defense systems, could be reopened by the new government.
“Kaczyński went against public opinion in making this decision,” said political scientist Norbert Maliszewski, adding that some of the personnel choices will come as a shock to centrist voters who had abandoned the Civic Platform party, in power since 2007, for Law and Justice. “Kaczyński wanted someone he could trust absolutely in this post.”
Other new ministers include Zbigniew Ziobro, who returns to the justice ministry he headed under the previous PiS government. He was the public face of the party’s law-and-order crackdown, often announcing highly politicized prosecutions at news conferences. His methods created concerns with civil rights groups, who worried that his eagerness to rack up prominent anti-corruption cases trampled on proper procedures.
Kaczyński expelled Ziobro from PiS in 2011 after the men clashed over the direction of the party. Ziobro made his way back in to power by heading a small, right-wing party allied to Law and Justice (PiS) that is key to keeping its majority of 235 seats in the 460-member parliament.
‘Reassuring messages’
In other notable picks, Witold Waszczykowski was named foreign minister. He is seen as pro-American and an enemy of Radek Sikorski, the former foreign minister.
Also getting a top spot was Mariusz Kamiński, an anti-communist activist who returns as coordinator of Poland’s secret services. He was convicted of abuse of power by a Warsaw court in March and sentenced to three years in prison for his actions while running the elite Anti-Corruption Bureau under the previous PiS government; he has appealed the verdict.
Konrad Szymański becomes minister for EU affairs. The MEP, who served from 2004-2014, was chosen several times by Polish media as the country’s best European parliamentarian.
The new government has come in for criticism because Andrzej Duda, the Polish president, said he was unaware that Wednesday’s EU leader’s summit in Malta will be followed by an informal meeting a day later to discuss the migration crisis — the same day he set for the first session of parliament. That means Poland may not be present alongside other EU heads.
“Szymański is supposed to send a reassuring foreign policy message that not much will change in Poland’s relationship with the EU,” said Maliszewski.
Mateusz Morawiecki, a former banking executive, becomes development minister and deputy prime minister. Markets have been worried that expensive promises made by PiS during the campaign could wreck Poland’s public finances and hurt banks. Morawiecki’s nomination to the top economic job in Szydło’s cabinet is intended to calm them.
“We think he solves a key problem for the PiS — having been a well-known and respected leader on economic policy,” wrote Peter Attard Montalto, an analyst with Nomura, the investment bank. “However, we believe he would only have been given the job by Kaczyński if he bought into the election campaign platform of PiS on economic policy.”
The government could be sworn in as early as Thursday.
The two weeks following the October 25 election have been marked by chaotic public relations that saw Szydło denigrated by senior members of the party, suggesting that Kaczyński was calling the shots.
“This is going to be a government of a weak prime minister surrounded by very powerful personalities,” said Maliszewski.