To my knowledge, no campaign team conducted professional polling to measure support. Everyone relied on reading posts on online forums, their own whims, and the opinions of more or less random people. Some of these people are so-called “community activists”—people who have done nothing themselves in life, but always have some good idea or advice for others, as well as a whole host of grievances. And it is from these grievances that the candidates’ campaign teams create their platforms.
Except for one campaign team: Piotr Roman’s. This team also did not conduct professional popularity research on its candidate, but relied on the intuition and experience of five previously won elections. Here, platforms were created according to the old, tried-and-tested maxim that the people, from the time of Julius Caesar to the time of Piotr Roman, want bread and circuses. And, adding a touch of modernity to this tradition, they also want to get to the circus on a renovated road and park conveniently in order to receive their bread—preferably in a free car park.
This principle, as simple as the construction of a flail, has already thrashed more than one opposing candidate, so why not use it if it works? Thus, the crowd hungry for circuses received a laser show projected onto the walls of the brand-new Museum of Ceramics headquarters at the end of the campaign.
Let us therefore review the opportunities available to the opposing candidates in this very uninteresting and substantively empty campaign for the mayoral office.
Bolesławiec’s Kaja Godek—Łukasz Molak, Impuls Lokalny
I do not know why Łukasz Molak did not organize his March for Life and Family on the First Day of Spring this year. If he had added a parish fair on Orzeszkowej Street, he would have had his circuses. Perhaps the March’s partners from last year—the Piarist school and Father Stanisław Kusik—did not want to get involved in promoting a candidate before the election? The March’s replacement will have to be the March edition of the Wolf Trail Run, which was partly a city event and partly Łukasz Molak’s. But as we know, one cannot be a little pregnant, so the city’s children ran in the city race that was... Piotr Roman’s.
In the 2014 election year, the March for Life and Family took place, and Maciej Małkowski, Impuls’s former mayoral candidate, promoted himself there. After ten years, do slogans promoting the killing of mothers in the name of so-called conceived life no longer attract crowds?
I would have organized at least some joint prayers in a public place for Bolesławiec’s prosperity. Or for the sins committed by city officials while promoting the receipt of the Europe Prize. Or for Piotr Roman, the mayor who has already had his fill. If such a procession had passed in the evening with candles, it would have been like the pilgrimage center of Lourdes in France (those who have been there—and I have—will know). It would have been spectacular.
A chance lost forever. Let us hope visits to the city markets, weekly Sunday church attendance, and voters’ memories of past marches and parish fairs will be enough.
I Will Prove I Am from Bolesławiec—Grzegorz Przybylski, Civic Coalition
He is the only candidate who had to record a reel for Facebook in which he tried to convince people that he is from Bolesławiec. The candidate’s strength is the party supporting him, a beneficiary of the October 15 election. And his weakness? Zero name recognition in Bolesławiec. Unless someone mistakes him for Father Cezary.
Only Grzegorz Przybylski secured the support of several entrepreneurial women. He invited them to a ticketed event—although the price was symbolic—at one of Bolesławiec’s hotels. The meeting featured the classics: cosmetics, sound massage and makeup, as well as an exchange of experiences and mental training—in other words, what entrepreneurial women supposedly like most according to cosmetics companies, in line with the old consumer slogan: buy it, “Because You’re Worth It”. Around 30 women attended the meeting, which I consider a strong turnout. Grzegorz Przybylski was there too. He was simply there.
Reels on Facebook and Instagram are not enough, one might say. Even those filmed at Klekusiowo. I would draw the candidate’s attention to Piotr Roman’s large banner, beneath which, like under an umbrella, Klekusiowo’s small banner was positioned, asking for 1.5% of tax. Maybe it means nothing, maybe I am overreacting, maybe it means absolutely nothing at all…
Clever Dobromir—Dawid Sarbak of Law and Justice
Dawid Sarbak has an idea for Bolesławiec and is generally a good man. His platform is the same as that of his two colleagues who are ten years older: Przybylski and Molak. I just do not know which one copied it from the other.
Dawid Sarbak’s Law and Justice platform and that of his team differ in no significant way from the platforms of Grzegorz Przybylski and Łukasz Molak of Impuls Lokalny. In general: more greenery, keeping young people in the city, taking care of parking, and maintaining free public transport. The last point can safely be assumed to be fulfilled and implemented.
In terms of worldview, Dawid Sarbak differs from none of the candidates, including Piotr Roman.
In interviews with the candidates, each of the men declared love for humanity, ideological neutrality toward sexual minorities in Poland, and was most eager to retreat behind the slogan of “combining tradition with modernity.” To me, this means that culturally and ideologically one is backward, but wants to commute to work by car—preferably a good one—eat sushi delivered by a caterer for lunch, and not walk with a bundle containing a second breakfast of turnip and a piece of stale black bread.
A Runoff? Yes or No?
As Sanah sings, “hope dies last,” so I would not want to take it away from anyone. Nor do I know what groundwork the candidates did. We were only told that Dawid Sarbak went door to door with his own leaflets. And that is exactly how elections are won or a result is achieved when one aspires to the mayor’s chair rather than already occupying it.
Work at City Hall is hard, but considerably easier because people are gathered at numerous events. And Piotr Roman always performs that work conscientiously. I am not debating whether this is fair or not.
The opposing candidates had two tools they could use. The first was beginner’s luck, arising from naivety and the belief that anything is possible—something that could have stirred up this year’s sluggish campaign. The second was people’s need, besides bread and circuses, to be heard and noticed—in other words, to feel important. Did the candidates use these tools sufficiently? I do not know, because in their reels they generally walk around the city alone or in pairs with council candidates from their lists.
Impuls Lokalny has identified with residents the most for years. It is probably the strongest opposition to the incumbent mayor and the one most deeply rooted in Bolesławiec. Will the devout minister Molak win more votes than the openly homophobic Maciej Małkowski? The election will show. It is possible that people wanting change will turn a blind eye to Łukasz Molak’s worldview and cross his name on the ballot to show the mayor a gesture marking the end of his time.
Will Dawid Sarbak receive enough votes from those who still want to show that Law and Justice is doing well? As head of KRUS in Bolesławiec, he must realize that KRUS beneficiaries are not Bolesławiec residents, and the only people in the city with anything to do with farming are allotment garden owners. And they are more likely to support Piotr Roman.
And who will support Grzegorz Przybylski of the Civic Coalition? Did he manage to convince Bolesławiec residents that he also lives here? Will his team and the council candidates properly engage people in this election? And, most interestingly to me, how did he deal with Karol Stasik, who was playing for himself in this election?
Piotr Roman not only opened the Museum of Ceramics with great pomp, thereby closing the official part of the campaign. He also secured coalition partners so that he could govern freely once again. Late in the evening of April 3, an article by Mateusz Mikołajewicz, head of the Polish People’s Party in Bolesławiec County, appeared online—but only briefly—in which he gave us a glimpse of what coalition-building had looked like. And from what I managed to read before the article disappeared, I conclude that Roman eats Mikołajewicz-types for breakfast and does not even notice that he has swallowed them. Well, hurry to read articles, because they disappear so quickly. Sometimes they provide extraordinary entertainment.
Piotr Roman’s team was pulling out all the stops; some people were climbing into sewer pipes and dumpsters. They neutralized every negative piece of information very efficiently, one has to give them that.
Piotr Roman and his team quickly blurred the scandal over buying paid interviews with themselves by sending loyal soldiers to such interviews. They clouded people’s judgment so effectively that Radosław Palczewski of the Civic Coalition fell for this form of advertising—but that only means the obfuscation worked.
The report “Supreme Audit Office Critical of the City Office under Piotr Roman” was more powerful. To this day, the city office’s website still displays an outdated correction to that article, which did not reach our editorial office and probably never will. Because, as in Jean de La Fontaine’s fable about the Tortoise and the Hare: “The swift, slender and nimble Hare (…) In vain rushed into rapid flight…”. But, as I have already written, Roman’s praetorians were pulling out all the stops to win this race to retain their favorite workplace.
Another report about Bolesławiec in ruins somehow passed with little response, although it was widely read. The campaign teams may have referred to it somehow, and the candidates may have used it in conversations with Bolesławiec residents, but they did nothing publicly.
Do the city’s women and men want change strongly enough to introduce it on April 7, and do they have a candidate they would favor so much that they would replace the well-known Piotr Roman with him?
All the candidates’ campaigns were ordinary, predictable, conservative, and sticky with the sugary syrup of love, making a normal person feel sick. Especially since we know what was happening behind the scenes and how much envy, narrow interests, and pure human hatred there is in local politics. And every candidate posed as a dove of peace and a lotus flower on a lake of gentleness.
If I had to bet on this change and put up my own money, I would bet on a runoff with Łukasz Molak. But if I were to bet on a runoff, I would not commit my own money.
Grażyna Hanaf