WARSAW — Locked in a dead heat against an unexpectedly strong challenger, incumbent Polish President Bronisław Komorowski is warning voters that if they choose Andrzej Duda over him on Sunday then almost a decade of Polish foreign policy gains could be jeopardized.
“You can’t choose people who would oppose Poland and the West,” Komorowski warned in his closing address in a final head-to-head candidates debate on Thursday night, three days before the vote. “This isn’t a blind date.”
Komorowski’s argument was bolstered by an unprecedented declaration by all the living Polish foreign ministers — bar one — offering unqualified support for Komorowski over Duda.
“The ability to find partners and allies is key,” said a joint statement issued by the five ex-ministers (all of whom served either left-wing governments or those of the Civic Platform party backing Komorowski). “Rashness, complexes and conflicts cause alienation and put us in a losing position.”
They also referred to the short 2005-2007 government of Duda’s right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS). He was just a deputy justice minister at the time, but the foreign minister for some of that period was the combative Anna Fotyga — unsurprisingly the lone absentee from the pro-Komorowski declaration.
The PiS government had terrible relations with Germany, bringing up wartime atrocities that most Europeans (bar the Greeks) are too polite to use in normal EU diplomacy. Warsaw also had a distant relationship with Brussels; it saw the EU more in a British way, as a free trade alliance of sovereign states and not an “ever-closer union.” Poland’s key foreign relationship was with the US.
That policy was scrapped when the centrist Civic Platform (PO) took power in 2007. A tandem of Donald Tusk, the former prime minister and now European Council president, and Radek Sikorski, the former foreign minister, turned Poland into an important EU player. Seeing the lack of US interest in central Europe, they shifted focus, making Germany Poland’s leading foreign partner and turning the EU into the main arena of foreign policy.
“Close cooperation with Germany allows us to get good decisions in the European Union,” Komorowski said during the debate. “The trick is to have strong friends in Europe and not strong enemies.”
Grzegorz Schetyna, the current foreign minister, said Poland’s foreign partners are “a bit afraid” of a Duda victory. Of course as a PO party baron and one of Komorowski’s main campaign advisers that sort of a view isn’t much of a surprise.
There is no question that Duda would change emphasis from Komorowski. “We can’t agree to all decisions, for example, in changes to climate policy dictated by countries in very different place when it comes to energy,” he said, adding that Poland would not be treated as a “category B” country.
And unlike lots of economic policy promises being tossed around during the campaign, where Poland’s president has very little to say, the president does actually have a role in formulating foreign policy — together with the government.
But aside from a change in nuance, it’s not all that clear that a Duda presidency would mean a radical revolution. During the debate he distanced himself from a radical PiS MP who once called the blue-and-gold EU banner a “rag.” There isn’t much difference at all between Duda and Komorowski when it comes to NATO — both want a permanent NATO base in Poland, the better to deter Russia. Both are also strong backers of Ukraine in its fight against Russian-backed separatists. Both also want a strong security relationship with Washington.
The more realistic worry is just how independent Duda would be as president. He was plucked from relative obscurity as an MEP by Jarosław Kaczyński, the PiS founder, and designated the party’s presidential candidate. It was Kaczyński, together with his twin brother Lech, who was killed in a 2010 air crash in Smolensk, Russia during his tenure as Poland’s president, who formed the thin-skinned duo that caused Poland so many diplomatic problems.
Komorowski is hoping that concern over Kaczyński steering a President Duda from behind the scenes is enough to galvanize the support he needs to win. However, Kaczyński has not been cooperating, keeping a very low profile during the race and allowing Duda to more visibly become his party’s standard-bearer.
Komorowski has also toughened up his message. Before the first round his slogan was a squishy: “Choose harmony and safety.” Now it’s: “The president of our freedom” — the subtext being pretty obvious that he intends to protect Polish freedom against Kaczyński.
He needs all the help he can get. Opinion polls show the two men tied in the final days of the campaign.
Komorowski unexpectedly lost the May 10 first round to Duda, who took 33.8 percent of the vote, a percentage point ahead of the incumbent. The result was a shock for PO as Komorowski had been far ahead in opinion polls earlier this year. Poland is undergoing the most prosperous period and secure period in its history — but that hasn’t stopped rising discontent with PO after eight years in government.
“The outcome was a surprise,” admitted Schetyna. “Now the question is how to convince those who used to vote for PO and now have some reservations about the party. They have to show up at the polls.”
Only 49 percent of voters bothered to turn out for the first round, the lowest for any post-communist presidential election. Komorowski wants to get more of those stay-at-home voters to show up on Sunday, in part by warning of the dire international consequences of a Duda victory.
The presidential election sets the ground for the more important elections for the parliament this fall. A Komorowski loss would create huge problems for Ewa Kopacz, Tusk’s successor, as she tried to lead her party to a third consecutive term in office.
And if she fails, the likelihood is that Warsaw could again have a government led by Jarosław Kaczyński.