Donald Tusk

Natalia Ojewska and Piotr Skolimowski, Tribune News Service

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk knew it would be a challenge to extricate the outgoing nationalist government from power after he orchestrated a shock election victory three months ago. “Did anyone really think that the job ahead of us would be light, easy and pleasant?” he said on social media platform X on Jan. 5. “No, it will be heavy, difficult and unpleasant for some time.” But just how tough is being laid bare in a political drama in Warsaw that has echoes of the aftermath of Donald Trump losing the US presidential election. It’s shaping up to be the biggest test of Polish democracy since the end of communism almost 35 years ago.

Between the president protecting two fugitive members of parliament, a central bank chief avoiding a probe into his policymaking and tens of thousands of people on the freezing streets of Warsaw, it’s been an eventful week in Poland. Tusk’s return to power was supposed to end a feud with the European Union over rule of law and unlock €60 billion ($66 billion) of frozen funds after his new government vowed to take Poland back into the mainstream. His election pledge was to reverse the country’s course within 24 hours. Rebuilding democratic institutions was never going to be straight-forward, though, after eight years of rule by the Law & Justice Party, which stacked public media, the courts and state-owned companies with its people. Rather than go quietly, the party under Jaroslaw Kaczynski, its leader and Tusk’s nemesis, has fired up supporters. Addressing crowds on Thursday in front of the Polish Parliament, Kaczynski said the incoming administration was trying to destroy Poland and subjugate it to Germany. “This is going to be the pattern now,” said Anna Materska-Sosnowska, a political scientist at the University of Warsaw. “So, I don’t see the situation calming down at all. I think we are likely to have a very turbulent period coming up.” Poland’s speaker of parliament has warned the country is in a deepening constitutional crisis. He said opposition lawmakers have told him they may set up their own assembly or at least disrupt the legislature. Among other things, Tusk’s government needs to approve its budget by the end of the month.

Tusk said on Friday evening he wants to unite the country divided by the years of aggressive political conflict. “For me, rebuilding institutions and their independence is absolutely critical — it’s a starting point for the Polish state to become acceptable to everyone again,” he said on television, adding the process may take years. “People need to feel that it’s for all, not for the selected few.” Demonstrators aren’t about to storm the building like three years ago in Washington, yet there are similarities with Trump supporters and the advent of the Joe Biden administration because of the divisions within Polish society. Law & Justice came to power in 2015, vowing to be the defenders of “true Poles” against the liberal elites in Warsaw and Brussels.

Everything from abortion rights to immigration and relations with Germany were weaponized with the populist, us-against-them narrative backed by state media, the Catholic Church and, on most occasions, President Andrzej Duda, a party loyalist.

“What has happened is something that many of us thought was impossible, which is for Polish politics to get even more polarized,” said Aleks Szczerbiak, a professor of politics at the University of Sussex in the UK. “The government has moved very quickly with radical measures. The result has been to raise the temperature very high.” Investors have taken the turmoil in their stride for now, and they have a lot riding on the transition of Poland back to a core EU ally. The zloty, stocks and bonds have all rallied since the election on Oct. 15, when Tusk’s opposition bloc won a majority as more voters turned out since the first free elections in 1989.