Local elections in Poland are testing Prime Minister Tusk’s new government after four months in power

Voters across Poland will cast their ballots in local elections on Sunday in the first electoral test for Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s coalition government almost four months since it came to power.

Voters will elect mayors as well as members of municipal councils and provincial assemblies, a major exercise in self-governance that is one of the great successes of the democratic transformation Poland underwent when it threw off communism 35 years ago.

In total, there are almost 190,000 registered candidates running for local government positions in the Central European country of 38 million inhabitants.

The second vote will take place two weeks later, on April 21, in cases where mayoral candidates do not win at least 50% of the vote in Sunday’s first round.

Opinion polls released in the days leading up to the election showed the two largest political formations neck-and-neck: Tusk’s Civic Coalition, an electoral coalition led by his centrist and pro-European Civic Platform party, and Law and Justice, a national party. conservative party that ruled the country from 2015 to last year.

Several other groups follow the two main groups, including the Third Way coalition, the Left and the radical right Confederation Party.

Tusk’s coalition government, which also includes the Third Way and the Left, jointly won national elections in October. The result, amid record turnout, marked the end of eight bumpy years of rule by Law and Justice, which was accused by the European Union of violating democratic norms with its changes to the legal system and public media.

Tusk won on promises to reverse many of those changes and is trying to implement that program, but it’s not easy. His efforts to restore the independence of the judicial system are a long process that will require the passage of new legislation.

And a promise to liberalize strict abortion law is being stymied by conservatives in Tusk’s own coalition.

The vote is also a test for Law and Justice, which has won a string of election victories and dominated the political scene for years, enjoying strong support in conservative rural areas. However, its hardline LGBTQ+ policies and restrictions on abortion rights were rejected by many of the young and female voters who cast ballots in the fall.

Local authorities have played a key role in the two major crises of recent years, rolling out vaccinations against Covid-19 and helping the huge numbers of Ukrainian refugees who entered the country following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Among the candidates is Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, a Tusk ally who is seeking a second term. He is favored to win, but it is not clear whether he could win straight away on Sunday or if he would have to go through a runoff in two weeks.

The outgoing term for local officials was the longest since 1989, after Law and Justice extended it from four to five years and then postponed elections by six months. chances.

First print: April 7, 2024 | 12:19 pm IST