WARSAW — Jarosław Kaczyński, Poland’s most powerful politician, doesn’t spend much time needling the country’s fractured opposition parties.
Instead, he goes out of his way to attack a movement led by an avowed non-politician who favors motorbike boots and a man bun.
That’s because Mateusz Kijowski, 46, a self-employed computer specialist, has helped create a civil protest movement that has drawn as many as 1.5 million people onto the streets in recent months to oppose the actions of the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS).
“Today they walk under the red-and-white banner, but they despise Poland,” Kaczyński, the leader of PiS, said in a recent speech. He’s also accused Kijowski’s movement, called the Committee for the Defense of Democracy (KOD), of acting on behalf of “foreign forces” which want Poland to be “something like a colony.”
Kijowski has become the most visible face of the opposition to Kaczyński and PiS — a spectacular leap for someone who was almost completely unknown less than a year ago. Prior to the launch of KOD he had dabbled at blogging, involved mainly in issues of post-divorce fathers’ rights.
Now he has become a political force, although he insists he has no interest in a political career — “I don’t want to be a candidate,” he said.
“There is certainly nervousness on Kaczyński’s part. He’s very worried about people coming out on the streets,” said Kijowski, standing beside a row of about a dozen tents housing protesters across the street from the prime minister’s office.
The protest started March 9, when Prime Minister Beata Szydło — chosen for her post by Kaczyński — refused to publish (and therefore acknowledge) a verdict issued by the Constitutional Tribunal. The tribunal, Poland’s top constitutional court, had ruled that radical changes to its procedures adopted by the PiS-dominated parliament violated the constitution, but the government insists the tribunal’s verdict is flawed and refuses to recognize it.
“Democracy is in danger. It shouldn’t be that one person controls the whole country, and that’s what Jarosław Kaczyński is doing” — Krzysztof Dąb, a sociologist.
It was the fight over the tribunal that built KOD. In November, the newly-elected parliament decided that the previous parliament’s election of five judges to fill vacating spots on the 15-member tribunal was defective. The legislature elected five new judges who were quickly sworn in by President Andrzej Duda — another politician chosen by Kaczyński.
PiS’s early actions prompted Krzysztof Łoziński, a communist-era opposition activist, to write a column calling for the formation of a civic protest movement to defend democracy modelled on the 1970s Worker’s Defense Committee (KOR), in which intellectuals banded together with workers like Lech Wałęsa to build the first Solidarity movement in 1980, and then helped bring down communism in 1989.
Łożiński wrote that the new movement should not be partisan: “We have to remember, the goal isn’t to overturn the legally elected authorities of the country, but rather the defense of democracy.”
Kijowski, who hadn’t been a political activist until then, launched a Facebook group promoting Łożiński’s column. Within a few days it had amassed more than 30,000 likes. “I knew we were onto something,” Kijowski said.
The movement organized itself in late November. Kijowski, along with other activists, was chosen to be in the leadership. He blossomed in his new role and is KOD’s most charismatic leader.
Kijowski has become the most visible face of the opposition to Jaroslaw Kaczyński, above | Wojtek Radwanski/AFP via Getty Images
The movement’s first large demonstration took place on December 12, in Warsaw, drawing anywhere from 20,000 to 50,000 people. On December 19, KOD organized demonstrations in cities around the country.
In those first marches, opposition leaders tried to grab the limelight, but they have been less present at more recent demonstrations, sensing the danger of tainting what is a genuine bottom-up civic protest movement with partisan politics.
“Some people ask me why we in KOD are so worried if Poland still has freedom of expression and no political prisoners,” Kijowski said. “I tell them that while democracy is not yet demolished, it is losing its security mechanisms, checks and balances.”
Drifting opposition parties
Kijowski and KOD stepped into the political vacuum created by PiS’s overwhelming electoral victory in October. Civic Platform, which had ruled Poland for the previous eight years, was rudderless and consumed with internal battles. Modern, a party founded months earlier by economist Ryszard Petru, was transforming itself from a movement of economic liberals into a broader-based party.
“We speak with Petru and others and cooperate with the party. You can’t change anything without politicians. But most politicians are now too weak, they don’t listen and we need to educate and help them do so,” Kijowski said.
Kijowski’s organization has roared onto Poland’s chaotic political scene. KOD has the support of 40 percent of Poles, according to a new poll conducted by the TNS organization for the liberal Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper. That’s more than PiS, which has the backing of 32 percent of those surveyed. The movement’s supporters are overwhelmingly from the opposition, but a quarter of those who voted for PiS also support KOD.
The poll also found that five percent of Poles said they have been to at least one KOD protest, amounting to 1.5 million people. Rallies haven’t dropped in size over the months of the standoff over the Constitutional Tribunal.
But the poll also pointed to some weak spots. Most of KOD’s supporters are over 40, with higher education and from the country’s largest cities.
“Whatever the reality, KOD has been perceived as a movement that represents the better-off in society,” said Gavin Rae, a sociologist at Warsaw’s Kozminski University.
The poll numbers are borne out by the look of the marches. They are overwhelmingly made up of older urbanites who still remember communist times, and who’ve done relatively well out of Poland’s quarter century of economic and political transformation.
There is a wry humor to the well-mannered protests. When Law and Justice was attacking Wałęsa, claiming he was a communist informant, many protestors showed up wearing stick-on walrus moustaches like that favored by the Solidarity leader. Many of those marching insist they aren’t there to back the opposition parties, but are demonstrating their opposition to Law and Justice’s more radical measures.
“Democracy is in danger. It shouldn’t be that one person controls the whole country, and that’s what Jarosław Kaczyński is doing,” said Krzysztof Dąb, a 47-year-old sociologist taking part in the protest outside Szydło’s office. “His power is just like the first secretary in communist times — he rules but has no constitutional function. It’s a return to the methods of communist Poland under a different ideology.”
A communist-era model
That’s a comparison that would befuddle many younger Poles whose memories don’t stretch back that far.
While older Poles “had a strong sense of déjà vu” when PiS started attacking the tribunal, younger people “did not experience authoritarian rule. They don’t know how it works,” Kijowski said.
The right-wing press denounced him for being a “snitch,” but Kijowski said that because Poland is a member of the West, there’s nothing wrong with asking for help.
Although KOD’s name intentionally evokes that of the KOR that helped forge the Solidarity movement, today’s Poland is very different from that of the 1970s. For one, there are far fewer workers, so the old KOR alliance can’t be recreated. For another, Poland is a democratic and capitalist country anchored in the EU and organizations like NATO — and external pressure has been a significant factor in the so far unsuccessful effort to get Law and Justice to reconsider some of its more radical measures.
It’s especially ironic that Kaczyński, a KOR activist in the 1970s, lashed out against foreign meddling in the same speech in which he attacked KOD, recalling how Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev would dictate to Poland’s communist apparatchiks.
Kijowski has been trying to galvanize foreign support, recently traveling to Washington to meet with congressional staffers and State Department officials to tell them about the situation in Poland. The trip was financed by donations received by KOD.
The right-wing press denounced him for being a “snitch,” but Kijowski said that because Poland is a member of the West, there’s nothing wrong with asking for help. “It’s like being in a family. If we have a problem, then we look for someone to consult with over how to solve the problem,” he said in Washington.
Enemies everywhere
As KOD has grown, Kijowski has come under closer scrutiny. He was accused by a leading tabloid of not paying child support for children from his first marriage.
“PiS and its friends are trying to build a false narrative about me, that I am a bad man, who doesn’t pay his alimony,” he said. “But I paid, even had to borrow from parents and friends to pay. This is all they have so far dug up on me. They won’t find anything else.”
‘We are building islands of civil society in Poland, places where people can talk, discuss, organize’ — Mateusz Kijowski
Kijowksi said he still tries to get the occasional IT job, but activism swallows most of his time. His main source of support is his wife.
Despite his rising profile and the increasing power of his movement, Kijowski stressed he doesn’t plan on turning KOD into a conventional political party.
“KOD’s popularity, 3-1/2 years before the next elections, would drop off significantly and Kijowski knows this and so does the opposition,” said political analyst Jan Muś. “Therefore, so far, KOD limits its activities to gathering and mobilizing popular opposition against the PiS-led government and their controversial bills.”
Instead of partisan politics, Kijowski wants to emulate the old KOR and reshape Polish society.
“We are building islands of civil society in Poland, places where people can talk, discuss, organize,” he said. “We are not looking for quick solutions. We want to build awareness, trust and belief among society, rebuild from the bottom up.”
There’s a lot to do. One of the reasons for PiS’s success last year was its effort reach out to millions of Poles who felt left behind by the country’s rapid political and economic changes and abandoned by Civic Platform.
“PiS offers a community based on emotions, on exclusion,” Kijowski said. “They need enemies and see them everywhere. We won’t give them an enemy.”