I'm not of
Polish descent. I'm Polish, currently in Poland and eating Polish
sausage chicken.
Here's the problem with Poland:
Polish democracy is a derivative of the French model. It's a bi-cameral (House called "Sejm" and Senate) proportional representation with parliamentary-presidential system where prime minister has more administrative power but president is directly elected head of state with veto.
Since 1991 until 2005 the main dynamic was the post-communist bloc vs the anti-communist opposition parties. In 2005 that shifted toward two parties from the anti-communist opposition which won the election and subsequently have become the dominant force. Those parties are:
- PiS (Law and Justice) - populist-nationalist-conservative party aligned with US Republicans, UK Tories and various anti-EU right-wing parties (Orban/Fidesz in Hungary, Salvini/Lega in Italy, LePen/FN in France). They're cryptofascists essentially. Theoretically pro-EU but constantly in conflict and sometimes talk about leaving the Union which is very unpopular in Poland and nobody believes they'd do it.
- PO (Citizens Platform) - Christian Democrats with liberal leanings aligned with German CDU (now also Greens because they formed a coalition with Polish Green party and call themselves KO - Citizens Coalition), US Democrats and either British party. They're a "meh" party but very pro-EU. The leader of the party Donald Tusk was the president of European Council (currently: Michel) from 2014 to 2019.
British influence is very important because Britain supported the government-in-exile after 1947 when Soviets falsified the elections and instituted communist dictatorship. Americans have influence for obvious reasons. Germany is a neighbour, largest economic partner and was instrumental in bringing Poland into NATO and EU in 1990s. All three have major Polish diasporas. Other countries didn't have significant role but there is/was also a historical relationship with Italy and France. We're a Catholic i.e. "Latin" country.
Since joining of the EU in 2004 Poland in general was a sensible European country with stable democracy and good media freedoms. In Reporters Without Borders rankings we scored in top 20 until 2015. Unfortunately the country was viewed by the US and British as means of facilitating their influence in Europe, which really was not so much about Russia, as about keeping Germany and rest of western Europe under control. Brexit plays also an important part in weakening the EU (and Britain as well). Poland was also seen as crucial in projecting influence in Ukraine.
Americans began to develop networks of overt and covert influence since Poland joined NATO in 1999 but it took time.
In the meantime PiS won the election in 2005 but failed to build a stable coalition and lost the snap election in 2007. PO won the election in 2007 and 2011 and formed a stable and moderate government. It was decent government and had good chance of wining again.
What happened in 2015 is that Americans bought one of three main TV networks (TVN) which was aligned with PO/government. TVN was French-owned (Canal+) but was bought by first Scripp Networks and later by Time Warner. It was bought in march of 2015
two months before the presidential election and it stabbed the incumbent (PO) in the back by changing the narrative and shifting attention to a third party candidate. The incumbent lost and PiS candidate won which shifted the polls to PiS' favour
five months before a parliamentary election. PiS ran a campaign based on blatant lies promising to be a better version of the previous government. I'll get to what they did in a moment.
The surge in polls for PiS was matched by the emergence of two new parties that took mostly PO's electorate while a third undercut the resurgent post-communists so that they failed to cross the electoral threshold for coalitions. All of that was extremely suspect because nobody knew where the parties came from and who funded them but 2015 was a messy year with the refugee crisis taking up the attention and people were tired with both PO and PiS and jumped on the opportunity without consideration.
This very unique situation with just five parties passing the threshold meant that
PiS won majority of seats in the parliament despite winning only 37% of votes. Almost "first past the post" despite Poland having a proportional mutiple-mandate districts. In 2007 PO won 41,5% and still needed a coalition partner. Manipulating the tail is crucial for victory and nobody does it better than FPTP political engineers.
As soon as they got into power PiS went
rabid. You can read about what they did. But what's more important is that they took over public media and turned them into their own propaganda outlets which essentially regurgitate Republican/Brexiter rhetoric. Before it was moderate Euro public media. Now it's Fox News 24/7.
At the same time many nominally "opposition" or "independent" media outlets were being bought out by American capital. For example Axel Springer which was a Swiss-German company with numerous outlets in Poland was acquired by American KKR investment fund run by a Republican donor. - just 51% shares, enough for control. Politico which is a Republican outlet (owned by Springer) collaborates with several major publications including some nominally
leftist ones.
The internet is run by American media companies and those tend to lean right/Republican and the "left" is primarily LGBT/feminism/identitarianism which suddenly exploded in Poland.
PiS went on a spending spree and established populist handout programs which gave them...only 43% in 2019 but kept them in power. The presidential election in 2020 was close but the other candidate is less "German" than Tusk and more "American/Democrat".
In 2021 the PiS government banned abortion in cases of fetal defect (!!!) and that caused huge protests which were organised very much like American anti-abortion protests. LGBT suddenly became a major topic despite Poland never having a history of discrimination. Now they're debating abortion ban in the case of rape (!!!!!) Etc etc. And it's pure theatrics to keep the narrative aligned with what American media know and understand because it's American right-wing spin doctors running it. Many people in Poland are really confused about it all. We were a very chill country and suddenly... this.
Since 2015 how reality is represented in the media completely shifted.
We de facto have a US-style binary pseudo-democracy in the media which puts tremendous pressure on our actual democratic system which is regular continental multi-party.
PiS purpose is to stay in power because otherwise they're likely on the hook for major breaches of law. It's like Netanyahu. They wanted to do what Orban did but failed. So they will do whatever Americans want because Americans control the "independent" media in Poland and their own party media lost credibility outside their own electorate which is ~30-35% and mostly retired/rural. PiS can only win if the opposition loses. Americans
really want to force a two-party system in Poland but Poles
really don't want it.
So... nothing you read about what "
Poland" or "
Polish government" does or says bears any reflection on what Polish people want or even what is in the best interest of Polish state. It's capture by political interest which serves a foreign power to win elections because the media has been captured.
For last 8 years we've been propagandised and manipulated to an extent that I remember only from communist times, but people haven't caught on yet because Poles don't understand the American or even British system and think it's all PiS' fault.
There's a parliamentary election in November. PiS will do everything to win it but
they are not friends with Democrats/Biden (in fact they congratulated Trump in 2020!) and so it's hard to say what will happen.
