On December 11, Monday, the short-lived third Law and Justice (PiS) party government led by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki lost the confidence vote in the Polish Parliament, effectively ending the eight-year-long rule of far-right party in the country. Following that, Donald Tusk, leader of the liberal Civic Coalition (KO), was elected to lead the new government in the country, with the support of the centrist and left-wing parties represented in the parliament. Donald Tusk received 248 votes in support in the 460-seat lower house of the parliament, the Sejm.
Tusk announced his cabinet on Tuesday with ministers from his Civic Coalition and from the Third Way and the New Left which extended support to Tusk’s bid for the premiership, to replace the PiS government that was characterized by misogyny, authoritarianism, and abuse of power.
The general elections held for all seats in both houses of the Polish parliament on October 15, had the highest turnout of 74.4% since the fall of the socialist Polish People’s Republic. The results served as a major blow to the conservative PiS, which has been in power in the county since 2015.
Even though the PiS led by Jarosław Kaczyński and Mateusz Morawiecki continues to be the largest party in the Sejm, with 191 seats and 35.4% votes, it lost 41 seats. The opposition parties including Tusk’s KO, the center-right Third Way, and the Lewica (The Left) have received 157, 65, and 26 seats respectively and decided to form a stable governing coalition. Meanwhile, the far-right political bloc Confederation secured 18 seats.
Even in the 100-seat Senate, opposition groups had gained a combined majority of 65 seats, while PiS was confined to just 34 seats. Despite losing the majority in the house, president Andrzej Duda, who hails from the PiS, gave the party the first chance to form the government as the single largest party, just to delay Donald Tusk’s imminent return to the premiership.
Donald Tusk had previously served as the Prime Minister between 2007 to 2014 and as president of the European Council from 2014 to 2019.
Poland has seen a drastic rightward shift under the PiS-led government, which has also been undermining national institutions. It has sought to subjugate the judiciary through a set of reforms that sparked widespread protests across the country. The PiS has also launched a war against women’s rights in the country. The Polish constitutional court, instigated by the government, imposed a ban on abortions in October 2020. The government continues to face criticism and protests from women’s rights groups for criminalizing abortions even in cases of fetal defects.
On December 12, Włodzimierz Czarzasty from the Left stated that “the Left enters this government to be the guarantor of our leftist program priorities: secular state, women’s rights, affordable housing, public services, protection of workers’ rights, and widow’s pensions.”
The National Women’s Strike in Poland expressed jubilation at the ouster of PiS from power. They have been staunch critics of the PiS regime as “the government that took away our reproductive rights, and when we rebelled against it, beat and gassed mercilessly. Whose policy of banning abortion led to the deaths of many women.”
