Opinion: Will Poland become the next Hungary, a democracy in name only?
Elections are all the time high-stakes affairs in international locations experiencing democratic backsliding. This was true of Turkey’s latest presidential election — described as “free however unfair.” Likewise, when Poles go to vote this fall, democracy itself can be on the road.
Since coming to energy in 2015, Poland’s populist Legislation and Justice (PiS) celebration has politicized the judiciary, harassed civil society and labored tirelessly to drive impartial media out of enterprise. It has capitalized on the politics of concern and grievance, pitted city voters towards rural constituencies and touted a mythologized model of Polish historical past.
On this sense, the PiS has been following within the footsteps of each Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán, whose nation can not even be thought-about a democracy, although it stays a member of the European Union. The distinction is that Poland’s de facto chief, Jarosław Kaczyński, has left the presidency to another person — Andrzej Duda — thereby shielding his affect from vigorous scrutiny.
These techniques might be working in Poland, simply as they’ve in Turkey and Hungary. Throughout a latest journey to Poland, I used to be shocked by the typically toxic anti-European — and, particularly, anti-German — tone of public discourse.
Finally, solely Poland’s voters can determine their nation’s political future. However that’s no motive for complacency on the a part of the worldwide group, particularly the world’s democracies. Full-blown authoritarianism would inflict incalculable harm on the West whereas a battle rages subsequent door.
A Polish authorities that eschews democracy, the rule of regulation, and European unity would embolden intolerant forces elsewhere, together with in the US, the place Donald Trump is main the Republican subject forward of subsequent yr’s presidential election.
One other PiS victory may also weaken Poland’s place as a bulwark towards Russian President Vladimir Putin’s imperial designs. Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine final yr, Poland has offered sanctuary for hundreds of thousands of refugees and has served as the principle conduit for Western army provides flowing to Ukraine’s armed forces. Poles can determine with the refugees’ plight, which remembers the barbarism they suffered by the hands of the Nazis, together with the destruction of Warsaw on Hitler’s orders (whereas the Crimson Military, on Stalin’s orders, sat on the alternative financial institution of the Vistula and watched).
The PiS authorities deserves excessive reward for its assist of Ukraine, which stands in stark distinction with the Orbán authorities’s “Hungary for Hungarians” stance and grotesque embrace of Putin. However its dedication to this strategy could have its limits. In an obvious try to safe farmers’ votes, it introduced in April that it was halting imports of Ukrainian grain, although it should be mentioned that Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia even have prohibited grain imports from Ukraine, and all have performed so with the EU’s blessing.
Fortuitously, the U.S. and the EU do have some leverage that they’ll use to stop Poland from threatening foundations of the post-Chilly Battle order, together with Poland’s apparent reliance on NATO for its safety and the EU for monetary assist.
The EU should undertake a constructive but agency strategy to the Polish authorities, backed by the enforcement of the rule-of-law conditionality that was imposed on diplomatic and monetary assist for each Poland and Hungary final yr. Already, the EU has withheld billions of euros that had been alleged to go to Poland.
Furthermore, the European Courtroom of Justice has imposed a large day by day effective on the nation — just lately lowered from 1 million euros to 500,000 euros — over its refusal to adjust to EU calls for to change its 2019 judicial reforms, which the ECJ dominated violate EU regulation. The EU should again this ruling with much more institutional and monetary muscle. The restoration of judicial independence is nonnegotiable.
Democratic and humanist values — the values for which the Ukrainian individuals are actually combating, at extraordinary value — are on the coronary heart of the post-Chilly Battle European order. Fortuitously, Polish civil society stays sturdy, with youthful generations more and more main the battle towards PiS’s depredations. They’re dedicated to stopping additional democratic backsliding and upholding European values, even when Kaczyński is just not. And so they deserve better assist from their Western allies.
The massive Polish diaspora within the U.S. and Western Europe is uniquely positioned to assist, together with the broader worldwide group. Courageous Polish NGOs — resembling Girls’s Strike — are combating on the entrance traces to defend ladies’s rights, underneath direct risk from PiS. We should amplify their voices, in addition to these of Poland’s more and more threatened LGBT+ group.
It’s as much as immediately’s Poles to take up the mantle of the Gdansk shipyard employees whose strike in 1980 led to the institution of the anti-authoritarian Solidarity commerce union and social motion, which finally introduced down communist rule in Central Europe in 1989. However Poland’s mates should additionally assist these Poles who embody this spirit. With out solidarity, Poland could effectively lose its democracy.
Kati Marton, chair of Motion for Democracy Advisory Council, is a journalist, human rights activist and the writer, most just lately, of “The Chancellor: The Exceptional Odyssey of Angela Merkel.”
