0:00

For all of the bad news in the world right

0:02

now, and there's a lot of it, the results of

0:05

Poland's parliamentary elections over

0:07

the weekend were really good

0:09

news for democracy.

0:10

Poland won. Democracy

0:13

has won. We have removed them from power.

0:16

Donald Tusk is the head of the opposition, which

0:18

got enough votes to prevent the ruling

0:21

Law and Justice Party from continuing

0:23

to rule.

0:24

This is one of the most beautiful days of Poland's

0:26

democracy. I have no doubt that this day

0:28

will go down in our history as a day that

0:30

opens a new era and the rebirth

0:33

of our republic.

0:34

Law and Justice is a nationalist,

0:37

populist party with authoritarian tendencies,

0:40

and it's undermined Poland's democratic institutions

0:42

since coming to power in 2015. Many

0:45

people expected it to keep doing

0:48

that. But these election results indicate

0:50

that Polish voters have had enough.

0:53

Coming up on Today Explained, what this all

0:55

means for Poland and for the rest

0:57

of Europe.

1:06

It's

1:06

Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. Vox's

1:09

senior foreign correspondent, Jen Kirby,

1:12

traveled to Warsaw for the Polish elections.

1:14

Now these were elections that many people in Poland

1:17

and outside of Poland said were the

1:19

most important in a generation.

1:25

The

1:25

line that I heard over and over

1:27

again was that this was the most important election

1:29

since 1989, when Poland

1:31

had its first partly free election in the

1:33

aftermath of communism. The current

1:36

ruling party, which is a conservative

1:38

right wing populist party called the Law

1:40

and Justice Party or PIS, that's the

1:42

acronym, P-I-S. They

1:45

have been in power for eight years and

1:47

in that time they have overseen

1:50

the undermining of the rule

1:52

of law and democratic institutions

1:54

in

1:55

Poland. Since the last eight years,

1:57

what's happened was a destruction.

2:00

the democracy and nowadays

2:02

democracies are dying

2:04

silently. So

2:06

we don't need tanks

2:07

on the streets to see it and that's

2:09

why it's very dangerous. They've entrenched

2:11

themselves most notably in new judiciary,

2:14

putting in judges who would be favorable

2:17

to their perspectives and point of views.

2:19

They've also taken control of public media

2:21

and really made it a mouthpiece of the state.

2:24

And they've done other things in terms of capturing

2:26

state institutions that have really consolidated

2:29

their power and so Poland has been

2:31

on this pathway to having

2:34

a liberal democracy and

2:36

a lot of people felt if the Law and Justice

2:38

Party won another term that that

2:40

would be the end, that there would be no going back, that

2:43

the next time the opposition wouldn't even have

2:45

a shot because the party in power

2:47

would skew the field so heavily

2:49

that that would be the end. You

2:54

went around Warsaw talking to people in

2:57

addition to some of them saying we

2:59

are concerned about the fate of our democracy,

3:02

what were the issues?

3:03

Yeah, so it was really interesting. The economy

3:06

was definitely a big one on people's mind

3:08

and also healthcare, which was sort of something

3:10

I wasn't necessarily expecting. In

3:12

Poland right now, the cost of living is

3:14

a really, really big issue. It has some

3:16

of the highest inflation in all

3:19

of Europe and it sort of creates

3:21

a lot of pressure on especially working

3:23

class people. And we heard a lot of that in some

3:25

of the neighborhoods I dream about

3:27

Poland that they will take care of young people for

3:30

sure, they will take care of the workers,

3:32

they will take care of

3:33

the housing crisis. You know, I

3:35

will say the thing that was

3:36

most interesting to me was in Poland,

3:39

as we know, they took in over

3:41

a million Ukrainian refugees. After the

3:43

war began, Poland welcomed Ukrainians,

3:46

fleeing the war and treated them as guests.

3:48

So pretty much everywhere you go, you run

3:51

into somebody who is from Ukraine. And

3:53

a lot of Ukrainian refugees

3:55

were probably the most supportive of the current

3:58

government because they were really... grateful

4:00

for what they had done in

4:02

terms of welcoming Ukrainians and

4:05

standing up to Ukraine in the very start of the war.

4:08

And of course they couldn't vote, but it

4:10

was interesting because the ruling

4:12

party itself was kind of picking a fight

4:14

with Ukraine. Poland has suggested that

4:16

it will no longer provide weapons to Ukraine.

4:19

Prime Minister Mateusz Morowiecki made

4:21

the comments after days of antagonistic

4:24

statements between the two countries. I would

4:26

say the other interesting thing was that

4:28

a lot of people were voting for fringe parties.

4:31

And so we saw a lot of people voting for folks

4:34

who were not necessarily the top two

4:37

big parties. They were looking for kind

4:39

of a change. And I think when you've

4:41

had a party in power for eight years, but also

4:43

the opposition, which is led by Donald

4:45

Tusk, who was the former prime

4:48

minister before the Law and Justice Party

4:50

took over, people were eager to have new face.

4:53

So you're hearing from voters what they care

4:55

about. Was there anything that

4:57

you thought voters might care about? Anything

4:59

that you thought you'd hear a great deal about that you

5:01

just didn't? Yeah, absolutely. So one of the

5:04

big things that we thought we would hear about was

5:06

migration, because, you know, the Law

5:08

and Justice Party is a super nationalistic

5:10

party. If we are accepting someone

5:12

from outside at the cost

5:15

of our basis, cultural basis,

5:17

this is disaster.

5:18

We often pick fights with the European

5:20

Union on the issue of migration. And one

5:22

of the things they did to try to motivate

5:25

their voters in this poll

5:27

was to kind of create this referendum

5:30

where they were asking really leading questions.

5:32

And one of them was essentially...

5:34

The question asks, do you support

5:37

the admission of thousands of illegal

5:39

immigrants from the Middle East and Africa in

5:41

accordance with the forced relocation mechanism

5:44

imposed by the European bureaucracy?

5:46

An extraordinarily loaded question that

5:49

was designed to sort of gin

5:51

up xenophobia within the Law

5:53

and Justice Party's base.

5:54

This is going to put Prime Minister Moravieci

5:57

on a huge collision course with the European

5:59

I don't know if you've seen the video,

6:02

but it's quite spicy. The

6:05

video shows scenes of streets

6:07

burning. This is put out by the Polish

6:09

Prime Minister pushing

6:12

towards his referendum.

6:13

And we didn't hear anyone on the street

6:15

really talk about that. We heard one person

6:18

criticize European bureaucrats in

6:20

part because Donald Tusk himself is. The

6:22

other thing I thought I might hear about was

6:25

Catholic family values. The

6:27

ruling party, the Law and Justice Party,

6:29

they kind of have a populist economic agenda,

6:32

but they're very socially conservative and they've waged

6:34

the kind of culture wars against

6:37

LGBTQ groups, you know, the woke culture

6:40

wars, so to speak. Under Law and Justice's

6:42

mandate, Poland had restricted abortion

6:44

and LGBTQ

6:45

rights, as well as distancing

6:47

itself from the European Union.

6:49

Going into this election, what

6:52

did many analysts and many Polish

6:54

people think was going to happen? Everybody

6:57

knew that the election was going to be

6:58

pretty close. Ahead of a heavily

7:01

contested election, the country has seen

7:03

its most aggressive campaign since

7:05

it became a democracy 32 years ago. A

7:09

country long seen as an example of democracy

7:12

after decades of communism is now

7:14

deeply divided.

7:15

And of course, you know, as many people

7:17

said to me that I spoke to in Warsaw,

7:21

you know, this election is going to be free and that,

7:23

you know, people will be able to vote and that vote will

7:25

count, but it's not going to be fair. The

7:28

Law and Justice Party in their time and power

7:30

has really kind of skewed the playing field.

7:33

For example, they put more

7:35

polling stations in rural areas where

7:39

they have a lot more of their own base.

7:41

And so they're trying to cater to them

7:43

and get more of their voters out to the polls.

7:46

Meanwhile, there was a record number of

7:48

polls abroad who registered to vote some 600,000.

7:52

And all those votes, which tend to favor the opposition,

7:55

had to be counted in 24 hours or they were

7:57

disqualified. So you see these little tweaks

7:59

to the system. That is designed to give

8:02

the Law and Justice Party a little bit of an edge. What

8:04

ended up happening? Yeah, so the opposition

8:07

won, basically. There was record

8:09

turnout in Poland, about 73 percent. And

8:13

essentially the opposition coalitions

8:15

won. And they didn't quite have enough votes

8:18

to form a government on their own. But if

8:20

you take in all these other smaller opposition

8:22

coalitions from the center, from the left,

8:25

they do have enough votes potentially

8:27

to

8:27

form a government. Foreign leader and

8:29

former EU Council President Donald

8:31

Tusk hailed it as a victory. I

8:38

want to thank thousands of Polish men and

8:40

women who are now sitting in polling stations

8:42

and making sure that no one tries anything.

8:45

This result speaks for itself. No

8:47

one will cheat this. No one will take this

8:49

away from us. We want democracy.

8:52

We want freedom. We want our beloved

8:54

Poland again.

8:55

The problem is the Law

8:57

and Justice Party has won

9:00

singularly the most votes, but not enough

9:02

to form a government on their own.

9:05

So the question is, could they maybe find a partner?

9:07

That doesn't seem likely based on the math. And

9:10

so the normal course of things would really just have

9:12

the opposition form a government. However,

9:15

it is possible because the Law

9:17

and Justice Party has, again, presided over

9:19

in a liberal democracy that

9:21

they may try to do something to make

9:24

it very, very difficult for the opposition

9:26

to form a government to take power. We

9:28

don't know what that might be, and we don't

9:31

know where things are going. But that is a

9:33

fear that you're starting to hear from

9:35

some democratic activists, even as they're celebrating

9:38

what is a really huge and amazing

9:40

victory for them and their cause.

9:41

For those Poles who want to

9:43

see their country returning to the center ground

9:46

and repair relationships with close

9:48

allies across Europe and the

9:50

EU, this is a good night.

9:52

How did they pull it off? How did the opposition

9:54

actually get this win or this close

9:57

to a win? I think it was a combination of

9:59

factoring.

10:02

They were very united and they really

10:04

tried to lean into the idea that this was as

10:06

essential. This is the last chance

10:08

election to keep democracy in Poland.

10:11

And I think there were some other factors that maybe

10:14

they didn't necessarily do that help them out.

10:16

One, again, is the economy is not great.

10:19

And so you have just support for

10:22

the law and justice party flagging. You have a

10:24

party in power for eight years, you get a little sick

10:26

of them. And then I would say the third factor

10:28

was the rise of this very radical

10:30

kind of chaotic party called the Confederation,

10:33

which is far right, but is much more

10:36

kind of weird. It includes anti-vaxxers

10:39

and conspiracy theorists. And

10:42

they were attracting, especially young voters

10:44

who are really disillusioned with the political system.

10:51

I think the big takeaway is that it

10:54

is possible

10:54

in an even backsliding

10:57

democracy for the

10:59

opposition for the defenders

11:02

of democracy to win an election. And that even

11:04

when election is not

11:07

necessarily fair, but it is free,

11:10

it is possible for democracy

11:13

to win.

11:14

That

11:17

was Jen Kirby.

11:23

She's

11:26

a senior foreign correspondent at Fox. Coming

11:28

up, Poland is not the only

11:31

country in Europe that took an authoritarian

11:33

turn in the last several years. You might remember

11:35

our adventures in Hungary last year. But

11:37

now that Poland has taken a step back, what

11:40

about the other

11:40

European nations?

11:49

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14:08

It's today Explained. We're back with Anna

14:10

Grzmawa-Busa. Anna is a professor

14:12

at Stanford and she directs the Europe Center there.

14:15

She's an analyst of both Poland and Europe

14:17

more broadly. And I asked her a

14:19

question. A generation from now,

14:21

when you're teaching students about this election

14:24

in Poland, what do you think the story

14:26

will be?

14:27

I think it will be

14:28

seen as the election that turned the tide.

14:30

I

14:30

think it's remarkable that we

14:32

have a denunciation of the peace

14:35

policies of the last eight years. We

14:37

also saw remarkable turnout 74 percent,

14:41

including close to 70 percent

14:43

of young people, the 18 to 29 cohorts coming

14:47

out to vote. And that turnout was decisive.

14:50

The results are higher than

14:52

any of the most optimistic polls. We

14:55

also are very surprised positively with the turnout.

14:58

That's 10 percent higher than in 1989. It

15:01

was basically a clear renunciation

15:03

of these kind of autocratic, xenophobic,

15:06

conservative policies of the peace party.

15:09

Now, you know, the tide may turn back again,

15:11

but at least for now, this is

15:13

a

15:13

massive sort of speaking out by

15:16

society against this party and its policies.

15:18

The youth turnout really surprised me. That

15:21

is an electorate that everywhere, whether the United States

15:23

or in Poland, is very hard to get to

15:26

vote. But I think for them, the issues

15:28

in these elections, whether abortion

15:30

or climate change or marriage

15:33

equality, just became so pressing

15:35

that they all turned out on mass. And that, to me, I think

15:38

is both the biggest surprise and the biggest

15:40

reason for hope for the future.

15:42

People often say that Poland is representative

15:45

of wider shifts in Europe.

15:47

What are those shifts? What has Poland

15:50

represented for the past couple of years? You

15:52

know, I'm not sure that Poland is all that representative,

15:55

but I think there is a sort of a broader shift

15:56

in Europe where a lot of the

15:59

mainstream parties...

15:59

specific classic parties of governance were

16:03

increasingly seen as unaccountable,

16:05

unresponsive, totally failing

16:07

to live up to the expectations of the electorate. And

16:10

so a lot of voters turned to these liberal

16:12

populist parties instead. They

16:15

tried them out. And in some cases,

16:17

these parties remain a minority. In other

16:19

cases, as in Poland or Tia

16:22

or Slovakia or Hungary, they gained

16:24

power. But the problem with

16:26

these parties that once they gain power, they

16:28

want to entrench themselves. And so

16:30

I think that's the kind of shift that we're seeing. And

16:33

where these parties entrench themselves as in Hungary,

16:36

democracy dies.

16:37

Yeah, I was in Hungary last year,

16:40

and we interviewed a lot of people about

16:42

the backsliding, the

16:43

democratic backsliding that was happening under Viktor

16:45

Orban. And one of the things that was really

16:47

interesting was how compelling Orban

16:50

is to many Hungarians.

16:52

So

16:56

he stands up for the interests of the Hungarians

16:58

all the time. He does everything so that

17:01

we can stay out of the war and we

17:03

can live peacefully, because peace

17:05

is the most important

17:06

thing.

17:09

Where else in Europe has this democratic

17:11

backsliding been happening? Just give me a look

17:13

at the map, if you would, and tell me what's going

17:16

on and where. So we're seeing these

17:18

kinds of illiberal populist parties supported

17:20

across Europe. In

17:23

Italy, Georgia Maloney won the

17:25

elections last year, and she is very

17:27

much in this vein. Maloney's party

17:29

has ideological roots in Italy's

17:31

neo-fascist movement, a movement

17:34

that gained traction after dictator Benito

17:36

Mussolini. In France,

17:38

Marine Le Pen tends to do very well

17:41

in the presidential elections. In

17:43

Germany, the alternative

17:44

for Germany party is also increasing

17:46

in its vote.

17:48

Germany's

17:54

far-right AFG has won its first district

17:56

election. It's a further boost to the anti-immigration

17:59

party.

17:59

it surges to record highs in opinion

18:02

polls. I think the big difference is that

18:04

with the exception of Italy, these parties

18:06

haven't come to power in Western Europe,

18:09

whereas in Eastern Europe they have, because people

18:12

expect a lot of democracy. And

18:14

so what happened in the countries

18:16

that became democracies after the fall of communism

18:19

in 1989 is that there were

18:21

several political options, and voters

18:23

tried at the center left, they tried out

18:25

the center right, they tried

18:28

some other parties out.

18:29

But none of them could really sort of address

18:31

the fundamental difficulties that

18:34

are associated with making the transition to

18:36

a market economy, with becoming fully

18:38

integrated in Europe, and so on.

18:40

And so eventually I think people

18:42

turned to populists, these illiberal populists,

18:45

and in the case of Hungary, that

18:47

party was extremely successful and

18:49

has now basically locked itself into power.

18:52

What are the challenges that populism

18:54

promises to address that have made

18:57

it so compelling?

18:58

You know, it's not that populism

19:00

offers solutions, but it speaks

19:02

a language that a lot of people want articulated.

19:05

It is a criticism of the elites, of

19:07

the fact that there's this cartel of

19:10

highfalutin elites that all just

19:12

basically create institutions and

19:14

succeed in the market and economy and do

19:17

very well for themselves, but do

19:19

very little for the people. It's a critique

19:22

of not protecting sovereignty enough. So

19:24

one of the criticisms that populist

19:27

parties articulate is that the European

19:29

Union is demanding too much from these countries,

19:32

and it's not doing enough to protect these countries

19:34

from the big threat of immigration,

19:37

as they see it.

19:37

Viktor Oban held a hard line against immigration.

19:43

Immigration increases crime, especially criminal

19:45

acts against women. The Polish

19:48

parliament has voted that migrants

19:50

can be pushed back over the border,

19:52

a tactic illegal under

19:54

international law. immigrants

20:00

and refugees, who she says are bringing

20:02

crime and poverty to Italy.

20:04

Unlike the United States, many of these

20:06

societies are culturally homogeneous.

20:09

And so an influx of immigrants

20:11

from foreign countries speaking different

20:13

languages with brown skin and

20:15

very different sort of attitudes

20:18

is seen as a cultural threat. And there's

20:20

the fear that with more immigrants, you

20:23

know, the healthcare system, schools, housing

20:26

all get stretched to the breaking point. All

20:29

right, so populists whip people up into a

20:31

frenzy about immigration. They

20:33

do it successfully enough that they get elected.

20:35

And then what we see are the populists get into

20:37

office, and we start seeing

20:40

something that is less populist

20:42

or partly populist, but also autocratic.

20:45

What have we been seeing broadly in

20:47

these countries in Europe where we see populism on

20:50

the rise? And then we bring autocracy

20:52

in, we say, okay, now we're seeing autocratic

20:54

governments. What does that actually look like? It's

20:57

basically a gradual erosion of democracy.

21:00

We don't see military coups. We

21:02

don't see revolutions, nothing like that.

21:05

Instead, precisely because these parties

21:07

criticize the establishment elites as

21:10

self-serving and not

21:12

responsive to popular needs. The

21:14

first thing that populists do is to assert

21:17

the need to bring democratic

21:19

institutions under democratic control.

21:21

But what they really mean by that is

21:23

to first and foremost go after the courts.

21:26

The ruling party in Poland has reduced

21:28

both the powers and the independence

21:30

of judges there, citing the need to make

21:32

its judiciary more efficient and

21:35

stamp out communist influence. Which

21:37

basically means that these political parties

21:40

then don't have any constraint, and they can

21:42

do what they want. And once they've taken

21:44

over the courts, they go after the media.

21:46

The state's media are basically government's

21:49

propaganda mouthpieces. They

21:51

try to eliminate free media. And

21:53

then as time goes on, they go after civil

21:56

society. They go after universities.

22:00

case where the party had the votes to do so,

22:03

they even changed the Constitution permanently. Protesters

22:06

say the ruling for the Des Party is getting rid

22:08

of democratic institutions and

22:10

tightening a grip on power. And of course,

22:12

on the edge, there are also all kinds

22:13

of electoral shenanigans. There

22:16

is buying off voters. There is incentivizing

22:18

their own constituencies, and so on, in ways

22:21

that sort of violates free

22:23

and fair elections.

22:24

That was the trend that everyone feared

22:27

was happening in Poland. And

22:29

yet Poland has just had an election. And what

22:31

you've told us is, wait, it seems

22:33

the

22:34

Polish people have decided they don't want

22:36

that. How typical is that? How typical

22:38

is it that a country begins sliding into autocracy

22:41

and then the people have an election and say, no, this is

22:44

actually not what we want? It's happened in other

22:46

cases. In Slovenia,

22:49

the sort

22:49

of populist would-be Trump got

22:51

voted out of power.

22:52

In Czechia, the lay list

22:55

presidential elections saw basically

22:57

a rejection of exactly

22:58

this kind of populism. So

23:00

voters can and do speak up. The

23:03

problem is that the longer that populist stay in power,

23:05

the

23:06

harder it is for that voice to be

23:08

heard. In

23:09

the Hungarian case, it is now virtually impossible

23:12

for the opposition to win the elections the

23:14

way it just did in Poland. Because in Hungary,

23:17

these changes went much, much further and much

23:19

more deeper into the institutions. And

23:21

everything from electoral districts

23:24

to voting rules in parliament have

23:26

been changed to keep that party in power. OK,

23:29

so Poland had not slid

23:31

too far, is what you're telling me. It

23:33

was able to come back with a vote, with a democratic

23:36

vote. Where else are we seeing this around

23:38

the world? This push and pull between populism,

23:41

authoritarianism and democracy.

23:43

Well, the obvious scenario is the

23:45

United States. The only way

23:48

we're going to lose this election is

23:50

if the election is rigged. Remember

23:52

that. The only way we're going to lose this election.

23:55

Yeah, we also saw in the 2020 elections,

23:58

a massive turnout, 66%. a lot

24:01

of young people coming

24:01

out and again voting out what they

24:04

thought was a populist

24:05

who was bent on a road in democracy.

24:08

That's the clearest case. In other places

24:10

you know like India, Venezuela, Turkey,

24:13

we see more and more fornalities

24:16

of an autocratic populist entrenchment.

24:19

Poland seems to be a canary in a coal

24:21

mine in some sense. Is it now

24:23

that we need to be concerned less about

24:25

populism and authoritarianism? How much of a bend

24:27

have we rounded here really?

24:31

I need to be concerned and I'm concerned because

24:34

you know it took an enormous amount

24:36

of effort. This was a really closely fought

24:38

election. It could have easily gone the wrong

24:40

way and had it not been for the

24:43

missteps

24:43

of the populist party, especially

24:46

regarding abortion and education

24:49

and climate change, they would have won

24:51

again. So this was I think a story

24:52

as much of an opposition

24:55

upsurge as it was of populist incompetence.

25:10

It's Anna Grzmawa-Busa. She teaches

25:12

political science at Stanford and directs their

25:14

Europe Center. Today's show was produced

25:16

by Isabel Angel and Avishai Artsy.

25:19

We were edited by Miranda Kennedy and fact-checked

25:21

by Tian Nguyen. The show was mixed

25:23

by Patrick Boyd. I'm the Well King. It's

25:25

today's news.