In Bolesławiec, Civic Platform-backed Bronisław Komorowski received 64.95% of the vote, while Jarosław Kaczyński (Law and Justice) received 35.05%. In the autumn local elections, the city will see a similar division between the candidates of the two parties. Dariusz Kwaśniewski is Civic Platform’s candidate. Although Piotr Roman is now unaffiliated, he is still strongly associated with his former party, Law and Justice. Will the electorates of Civic Platform and Law and Justice divide their support similarly in the local mayoral election?
The answer could be simple: no. But given that in the presidential election we voted primarily against the Law and Justice candidate, rather than for the candidate supported by Civic Platform, perhaps it is worth considering the future party sympathies of Bolesławiec’s residents.
Poland’s western provinces, the so-called Poland A—more prosperous and mentally more integrated with the European Union—voted decisively against the Law and Justice ideology and the Fourth Republic created by Jarosław, from which he so strongly wanted to distance himself during his campaign. In western Poland, his risky turn toward talking about modernity and love beyond divisions, while simultaneously winking at the hard-line electorate under Father Rydzyk’s wing, failed completely. Although nationwide, the election showed how much support a candidate who plays on Polish complexes and phobias can command.
Although we were not delighted with Komorowski, and his campaign was worse than mediocre, we went to the polls and voted for him against Kaczyński. Nationwide analyses say that the slogan “Agreement Builds” nevertheless carried something more than an empty platitude. It offered some guarantee of a peaceful, conflict-free politics. Meanwhile, the slogan “Poland Is the Most Important” threatened another round of building barricades against imaginary enemies.
Can this way of thinking about parties and their ideologies carry over to the local level?
Piotr Roman left Law and Justice at the end of 2007. As he said, it was a gesture of solidarity with Kazimierz Ujazdowski. “Law and Justice needed me more than I needed Law and Justice. As for that affiliation, it had its advantages and disadvantages. I know several people who did not vote for me because I was running with Law and Justice,” Piotr Roman explained his decision in an interview with IstotneInformacje.pl.
Despite leaving the party under whose banner he ran in the local elections, Roman remains close to the Law and Justice electorate, because it is his hard-core electorate. His efforts on its behalf result in grand celebrations of the anniversary of Maria de Matias becoming the city’s patron saint and in the takeover of the local television station, watched mainly by older people. All city celebrations at which the mayor is the main guest are intended to secure the votes of those for whom a free concert with beer, and sometimes a free serving of roast suckling pig, is a tangible attraction associated with the message: the mayor gave it away for free.
Civic Platform candidate Dariusz Kwaśniewski emerged from nowhere in the winter. It does not seem that either he or his party has a good idea for promoting a mayoral candidate among Bolesławiec’s residents. Yet, as we have already written, he has the party behind him—a party strongly supported in the city, as the presidential election demonstrated.
Kwaśniewski began with the idea of conducting the mayoral campaign like a game of chess. For now, however, he seems to have stalled while devising his next move, because his activity is close to zero. It is true that declarations of a calm, conflict-free campaign sound sincere coming from a Civic Platform candidate, and especially from Dariusz Kwaśniewski. However, Roman is not Kaczyński. His declarations of a peaceful election are equally genuine. It therefore seems that we have the same stalemate as in the previous campaign, in which agreement built and Poland was the most important. We chose not the substance behind the slogans, but the substance produced by the politics of the two parties.
After the presidential election, however, I believe that the outcome of the local election does not have to be predetermined at all. Everything depends on Kwaśniewski’s campaign staff—if one exists at all.
Why is the result unsettled? Because I am not sure whether Bolesławiec, located less than 50 kilometers from Germany, will vote for Poland B’s president, Piotr Roman, who is associated with Law and Justice. Will free festivals, swimming pools, pavements and the viaduct show be enough, together with the hard-core electorate, to win the votes of most Bolesławiec residents? Nor do I know whether Kwaśniewski, who obtains money from the European Union, will finally manage to find his own character and write a concrete program that will interest voters who moments ago cast their ballots for Komorowski—those who chose a Poland without the perpetual hangover of lost wars, without the complexes of partitions and economic and civilizational backwardness, without the sacrifice of the Christs of Europe, without endlessly recalling the tragedies that have befallen us, and without the Catholic duty to carry moral principles to the rotten West.
The elections are over! Long live the elections! We can shout that and hope that the candidates’ campaign staffs will not take a vacation, but will work to show how seriously they treat the city and its residents.
Grażyna Hanaf