The political year kicked off with Prime Minister Donald Tusk saving his Civic Platform (PO) party colleague and subordinate, Cezary Grabarczyk, from losing his job as infrastructure minister in the face of a no-confidence vote brought against him by the opposition. The minister was blamed for the chaos that resulted from the ill-prepared new railway schedule, which forced passengers to spend hours on end at stations with no credible information on train times. This situation went on all through the mid-winter holiday period, leaving many passengers furious and demanding that heads should roll.

The opposition smelled blood and tried to inflict a painful blow on the government at the begining of the new year by initiating a no-confidence vote in the hope of getting the minister dismissed. But the PM backed his minister resolutely, rallying his coalition partners to Mr Grabarczyk's defense and ensuring the motion was defeated. In the end, 229 MPs voted against the motion, while 192 voted in favor. A simple majority is needed to win a no-confidence vote in the 460-member Polish parliament.

Strong coalition, strong Grabarczyk

Even though the outcome of the vote was no surprise to political observers, it was important because it clearly illustrated two current political realities. The first being that after three years in power the PO-Polish People's Party (PSL), coalition is as strong as ever and can be expected to continue running things until parliamentary elections in autumn this year, barring of course any major political earthquakes. This is good news for the country as political stability is vital in an era of global economic uncertainty. Poland in particular needs such stability as it is due to take over the EU presidency on July 1 this year and the last thing it needs is a repeat of the Czech-presidency scenario, during which the ruling coalition fell apart, effectively not allowing Prague to have any real influence on European policy during its tenure.

Secondly, the fact that Mr Grabarczyk kept his job despite the massive public criticism levelled against him reflects his rising importance in the prime minister's party and indeed to Mr Tusk himself. He wasn't saved out of sentiment. Indeed, the PM is not known to be an overly sentimental politician and has fired ministers for much lesser sins.

A good example is Zbigniew Cwiąkalski, the former justice minister who lost his job because a prisoner and key witness in a high-profile case managed to hang himself in jail. And it's not just a matter of opinion polls dictating the PM's actions, an accusation often levelled against him. Just before Mr Cwiąkalski's exit in 2009, a GfK Polonia poll indicated that 39 percent of Poles wanted him dismissed while 48 percent thought he should keep his job. He ended up losing it.

This time, roughly two-thirds (62 percent) of Poles thought Mr Grabarczyk should be dismissed, according to a poll done by Homo Homini. But Mr Tusk decided that this minister should stay. What makes him so special?

Keep potential Brutus occupied

While Mr Grabarczyk is not and will probably never be a media star, he is a very powerful fraction leader in PO and therefore useful to the PM as a counterbalance to another powerful fraction leader, Sejm Speaker Grzegorz Schetyna, once Mr Tusk's personal friend and political ally, now only the latter (for now).

Mr Schetyna's twenty-some-year-old personal friendship with the PM ended the day he lost his job as deputy premier and interior minister in humiliating circumstances, after being informed of Mr Tusk's decision to dismiss him by a journalist on live television. After that incident, Mr Schetyna, considered the number two man in PO, said he and Donald Tusk would now be like the band U2, whose members are known to go their seperate ways after concerts and rehearsals, rather than hanging out together. So while the PM is popular and firmly in control of the political situation in Poland for now, he knows that the day he slips, Mr Schetyna isn't likely to be waiting with open arms ready to break his fall.

Fraction leader needed

Cezary Grabarczyk is rather unassuming, well mannered, lacking in charisma and an extremely dull speaker. Hardly a direct threat to Donald Tusk's leadership, which is all the better for both of them. However, he has been building a fraction in PO largely based on politicians hailing from the Łódz area (termed the “Łódż group” by PO members) for some years now and while most party members say he is, along with Grzegorz Schetyna, ex aequo number two in the party, there are those who even claim he has overtaken the sejm speaker in the informal party heirarchy and is now somewhere in between him and the PM, which would make him number one-and-a-half or something of that sort.

Mr Tusk therefore needs to keep him strong (but not too strong of course) in order to weaken Mr Schetyna's influence in the party and to keep the two at each others throats rather than at his own. Suffice to say that Mr Schetyna himself, when asked if he would vote for Mr Grabarczyk to keep his job, said he would do so because he was “a loyal PO member,” implying that his opinion on the infrastructure minister's eventual dismissal differed from the official party line.

Average PM, excellent political player

Meanwhile, a poll was conducted this month by SMG/KRC asking people how they graded the prime minister's job performance after three years in office. Two percent of Poles think Mr Tusk is a very good PM, 19 percent think he is a good one, 42 percent say he is average while 17 percent think he is weak at his job and 16 percent consider him a terrible head of government. Most Poles thus consider the prime minister an average performer. But whatever one may think of how he's handled his job at the helm of government, Mr Tusk's skills at playing party politics are definitely above average. PO was formed roughly a decade ago. Donald Tusk has been its leader since 2003 and has since then managed to ease out, marginalize or keep in check all those who could be potential threats to his position as number one in the party. What is remarkable is that he has done this while maintaining his nice-guy image in the minds of most Poles. How did that Sade song go?

“He's a smooth operator....”

In terms of politics, the year 2010 was at turns comic and tragic in Poland. But it was never dull, despite Civic Platform's (PO) ever-growing monopoly on power.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk offered the first surprise of the year when he chose not to run for the presidency. Perhaps “surprise” is the wrong word – polls favored Mr Tusk against other potential candidates, including incumbent President Lech Kaczyński, yes. But those more familiar with the PM knew he would be loath to relinquish a position of real power in exchange for a position which is, as he phrased it upon announcing his non-candidacy, all about “prestige and chandeliers.”

Donald Tusk's decision energized the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, which believed its own candidate, the embattled Lech Kaczyński, stood a good chance against a PO politician of lesser stature.

The odd presidential primary which followed – a first for Poland as well as Civic Platform – might have proven them right, had the year progressed differently. Neither the wooden political veteran (Bronisław Komorowski) nor the Oxford-educated PiS turncoat (Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski) did much to excite neutral observers. And when the long-serving Mr Komorowski handily won the contest, an outcome which surprised few, the stage was set for a Komorowski-Kaczyński showdown.

Politics rewritten

The April 10 plane crash changed the course of Polish history. The deaths of the president and first lady, key politicians and military leaders as well as scores of others – the impact of this event will be felt for years to come.

In the outpouring of national grief that followed, Lech Kaczyński went from being an incumbent whose approval ratings languished at around 25 percent to a national hero of nearly mythical proportions. Controversially, he was buried in the crypt of Kraków's Wawel Castle, a resting place reserved for Poland's greatest leaders.

After the funeral, a period of uncertainty. Would the late president's twin brother and leader of PiS, Jarosław Kaczyński, run? Would he be able to keep his party together?

Yes. And not entirely.

Poland's 2010 presidential election indeed turned out to be a Komorowski-Kaczyński showdown. A visibly bereaved Jarosław – he would later claim much of his campaign was run under the influence of sedatives – made it to a second-round run off against Bronisław Komorowski, but lost by a margin of about six percentage points.

That he did even that well, a fact which took some politics watchers by surprise, was largely attributed to his disarmingly calm, non-confrontational posture during the campaign. At least one pre-Smolensk survey found that he had the highest percentage of “would never vote for” responses out of major politicians. But after the tragedy, sympathy and non-aggression lent credence to his new image.

On the campaign trail he said negative emotions should be put aside and politicians should come together and cooperate for the good of the country. “Polska Jest Najważniejsza” (Poland is Most Important) was his campaign slogan. Those in charge of his campaign, MPs Joanna Kluzik-Rostkowska and Paweł Poncyljusz, claimed that the April 10 tragedy had changed Mr Kaczyński. And he started gaining rapidly in the polls.

A return to form

July witnessed one of the most spectacular about-faces in modern Polish history. Having lost the election, Mr Kaczyński amped up his rhetoric to previously unheard levels. He refused to attend Mr Komorowski's inauguration, vowed never to shake his hand and stated that the new president had been voted in “by mistake.”

He categorically ruled out any possibility of cooperation with Mr Komorowski and famously described Poland as a “Russian-German condominium.” During the row over the Smolensk cross standing outside the Presidential Palace, Mr Kaczyński rallied support against the plan to relocated the icon and called for a suitable permanent memorial for the crash victims.

At the same time, news emerged of friction within PiS. According to these rumors, Mr Kaczyński held the moderates in his party responsible for his election defeat as well as for trying to take over PiS. Rumor became reality late in the year, when Joanna Kluzik-Rostkowska, who had run Mr Kaczyński's widely praised presidential campaign, was ousted from the party along with a colleague, Elżbieta Jakubowska. Other politicians chose defection before defenestration, joining Ms Kluzik-Rostkowska under the banner of Poland is Most Important, a new political association with a familiar name.

The one-party system

So where does that leave Poland as 2011 begins? With PO far more dominant than when the year began and PiS seemingly at pains to marginalize itself.

The local government elections held in November gave PO about 31 percent of the votes and PiS at 23 percent, an increase for the former and a drop for the latter compared to the 2006 elections. The Polish People's Party, which is traditionally stronger in local elections than on the national stage, took 16 percent of the vote, while the Democratic Left Alliance was at 15 percent.

PO has now won four consecutive elections, an unprecedented achievement in post-communist Poland. Moreover, it seems a foregone conclusion these days that the party will win next year's parliamentary elections. The only real speculation is by how great a margin.

Donald Tusk ends 2010 a kingmaker, Jarosław Kaczyński a wild card.

That's all well and good for Mr Tusk and his party – they have good reason to break out the champagne for New Year's Eve – but the lack of a credible opposition is dangerous for Poland. Democracy does not flourish in a single-party system.

Perhaps Mr Tusk himself phrased it best in a recent interview with Wprost: “There's nobody to lose [an election] to.”

Sadly for Poland, he is right.

The second round of voting in Poland's local elections is now over. Independent candidates and Civic Platform (PO) representatives are the big winners. Out of the 107 cities where presidents were chosen on Sunday, independents won in 64 cities, PO candidates in 23 and Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) in eight. Law and Justice (PiS) candidates, meanwhile, were victorious in five cities and a candidate from the Polish Peoples' Party (PSL) won in one city.

In general, most incumbent presidents retained their positions which would suggest that Poles are mostly satisfied with the way things are going in the majority of cities. This is no doubt linked to the fact that standards of living in Poland are rising quite rapidly and that the EU funds which are flooding in are generally being put to good use.

Overall, the results can be seen as a big coup for independents, as being decent enough for PO, and as being as expected for SLD and PSL. For PiS, however, the results represent a poor showing. As the biggest opposition party in Poland, PiS could have expected to do far better than it did.

A Polish-Russian thaw

The really big news this week has surrounded the visit to Poland by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Mr Medvedev's visit is the first official visit by a Russian head of state in Poland since 2002 when the then president Vladimir Putin visited the country. In later years Polish relations with Russia turned frosty, especially in 2005-2007 when the Polish government was run by the hardline PiS leader, Jarosław Kaczyński. Mr Tusk's government has steadily worked to improve relations and it seems that the April 10 Smolensk airplane catastrophe was paradoxically the turning point in these efforts.

In the days following the tragic events ordinary Poles and politicians alike were touched by the outpouring of sympathy showered on them by the Russians. This helped to create an atmosphere of goodwill between Polish and Russian politicians and this has translated into real political progress. After his meeting with Dmitry Medvedev, Polish President Bronisław Komorowski said that the bad era of Polish-Russian relations was over and that a new chapter was being opened.

Russia is very obviously the stronger party here and it is to a large extent up to Moscow how relations will eventually pan out. But Poland has its part to play, too. It is weaker than Russia but growing increasingly stronger by the day. This increased strength is due to two factors – Poland's growing economic might and its increased political influence in the European Union.

Goodwill apart, these two factors are central in explaining why Moscow is making an effort to improve relations with Warsaw. To put it simply, Russia now feels it is worth making an effort over Poland.

 

Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced last week that he considers the suspension of state subventions for political parties during the tough budget years of 2012-2013 an obvious move. he says he is counting on the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) to support him in this initiative as he already has the support of Law and Justice (PiS) expellee Joanna Kluzik-Rostkowska's new parliamentary club, Poland is Most Important (PJN). Mr Tusk said SLD's stance on the issue will be a test of their social sensibilities.

 

 

“If it turns out that [SLD] leader Grzegorz Napieralski is only good in distributing taxpayers' money, and isn't ready to give up the money which his party could get, then I think he will have failed the test of leftist sensibility,” said the PM.

Chasing the rabbit?

 

Is there a political leader out there who would be willing to forgo zł.40 million – what Civic Platform (PO) received from the state this year – for his party? Hard to believe. Opponents from parties dead set against giving up their subvention cash retort that Mr Tusk is simply up to his old tricks again. The PM is skilled at proposing popular solutions that he knows will never get the backing of other factions in parliament. When these initiatives (inevitably) fail, he publicly expresses disappointment at the lack of backing for his worthy ideas.

Stanisław Żelichowski, head of the Polish People's Party's parliamentary club, put it succinctly when he said the PM's idea was “all about chasing the rabbit and not catching the rabbit.”

“One would think it logical that if PO really wanted to pass such a bill, they would consult their coalition partner first and not just spring it on us,” said Mr Żelichowski.

Sending a strong signal

So is the PM up to old tricks again or is he serious about the initiative? Estimates suggest that it would save the budget over zł.360 million in the 2012-2013 period. That wouldn't close the budget gap, but the money could certainly be used elsewhere and besides. It might also send a powerful signal to ordinary Poles that everyone – politician and voter alike – is in the same boat. The PM knows that after his unpopular VAT hike this year, such a move would make an impression on many voters.

On the other hand, political parties need funds to function and, since individual contributions to parties are limited, that money must come from somewhere. In fact, rumor has it that PO has been quite thrifty with its cash in recent years and currently has about zł.70 million in the bank, whereas its main rival, PiS, reportedly has little in its war chest. Thus the latter would probably find it difficult to finance its operations in 2012 and 2013.

PJN off to (relatively) good start

The PJN parliamentary club has naturally supported the move because it has nothing to lose, but it is unlikely that other parties will back it. A likely compromise is support for a reduction in subventions.

Meanwhile PJN, or PiS-light, as it has been called, has gotten off to a promising start in the polls, with the latest Homo Homini survey giving it 6.4 percent support. The group is also apparently working hard to set up local party structures around the country, a vital element in real-life, day-to-day politics.

Adam Bielan, a PJN member and former spin-doctor of PiS, has confirmed that his group intends to stand in next year's parliamentary elections. He has also criticized PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński for his aggressive stance after the presidential elections, which lost the party millions of voters.

“PiS has now become a party of lepers,” he stated.

With all the votes counted we now know what happened in the November 21 local elections in Poland. The ruling Civic Platform (PO), with roughly 31 percent of the vote, won as expected. The biggest opposition party, Law and Justice (PiS), with about 23 percent, lost ground as expected – quite a lot of ground in fact.

At first, when you look at the percentage figures, it seems that Jarosław Kaczyński's party didn't do so badly. After all, they received just two percent less than in the 2006 local elections when they captured a quarter of the vote. But if you examine the political consequences of last Sunday's result, one sees just what sort of damage PiS has suffered this time around.

First, while Mr Kaczyński's party scored two percentage points less than last time, its main rival, PO, improved on its 2006 results by four percentage points.

Secondly and more significantly, the most important organs to be elected were the sejmiki wojewódzkie, mini-parliaments in each voivodship (province) made up of elected councilors. These are the most powerful of the local government organs, especially now with EU funds flooding into the country.

Even though the purpose of these funds has been pre-determined, the criteria for their distribution is not clearly defined, giving the sejmikis the power to allocate particular funds to projects as they see fit.

To quote the former Polish president, Lech Wałęsa, “he who holds the cake has the power.” Indeed.

PiS off

In 2006, out of the 16 voivodship parliaments, PO won control of 10, PiS five and the Polish Peoples's Party (PSL), one. This time around it was PO 12, PSL one, PiS two and there was a tie between PO and PiS in one voivodship. Mr Kaczyński's party thus lost control of the Podlaskie, Małopolskie and Łódzkie voivodships which it won four years ago.

What's more, in the Podkarpackie voivodship, a well-known PiS bastion (which it retained), it is very likely that Mr Kaczyński's party won't be running things. It didn't win an absolute majority, and the other three parties, PO, SLD and PSL have already announced that they intend to form a coalition and rule there.

This would be a particularly painful blow to PiS and shows just how distrusted and disliked it is by all the other parties on the political scene; and how it has, by its own arrogant, uncompromising political style, helped create an anti-PiS coalition throughout Poland.

All this means that PiS could effectively be shut out from having any real influence on the governing process in practically all of the voivodships in the country. That would no doubt leave a lot of its local party activists frustrated and might see them joining the expelled PiS MP Ms Kluzik-Rostkowska's new political initiative, even if just out of sheer political calculation.

The Polish wall comes tumbling down?

What was potentially most interesting is that PO has broken the traditional east-west divide, where the richer, more liberal western part of the country had till now continually backed the ruling party, while the poorer, more conservative eastern regions had stood firmly behind PiS.

That is now history, with PO taking three voivodships in the eastern regions. These results could be indicative of the fact that all over Poland, even on the local level, people are increasingly less impressed with the ideologically dogmatic PiS politicians and their aggressive and sometimes insufferable leader, Jarosław Kaczyński. And they are opting for what they see to be more pragmatic and constructive parties like PO, SLD or PSL.

This is really a bad sign for what is still (for now) the biggest opposition party in Poland prior to next year's all-important parliamentary elections. In local polls, people don't usually cast negative votes. Rather, they opt for a party or politician they think is performing well in their particular city or region.

Surveys have shown that Polish people do see the correlation between what goes on in local governments and their everyday life. They see their roads, sewage systems and general public infrastructure and can easily compare them to those in neighboring cities and provinces. In short, people tend to vote based on rational criteria in local elections.

Poles, however, do not see a correlation between what goes on in parliament and in their everyday lives and tend to vote in parliamentary elections solely on the basis of their emotions, and it's mostly a negative vote against somebody (usually the leader of a party) they don't like. “Anybody, as long as it's not him,” Poles often say.

All the worse for PiS and Mr Kaczyński, who is probably the most hated politician in Poland. It will be very difficult for his party to better its local election performance in national polls, with the possibility of an even worse performance becoming increasingly likely.

Warsaw = PO territory

Meanwhile, in the most closely watched mayoral race in these elections, Warsaw's incumbent Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz (PO) easily won reelection in the first round of voting, with over 50 percent of the vote.

And so, for the first time in post-communist Poland, the capital city will be governed solely by one party, PO, since it won an absolute majority in the state legislature.

Independents do well

Another interesting development was the fact that in some major cities, independent candidates won election or reelection without the backing of either of the two major parties. Rafał Dutkiewicz, running on his own platform, was reelected president of Wrocław with over 70 percent of the vote.

Independent candidates from Gdynia, Toruń, Kielce, Katowice, Rzeszów and Bielsko-Biała also won in the first round of voting, while the current mayors of Poznań and Kraków are likely to win in the second round of voting against major party candidates.

All in all, independent election committees won around 15 percent of the vote, showing that it is possible to take on the big boys in Poland (at least in local elections) and have good results.

Coalition partner now much stronger

One aspect of this election's outcome that will have an especially significant impact on national politics is the surprisingly good results for PSL, PO's junior coalition partner in parliament. The rural-based party came third in the elections with roughly 16 percent of the vote. That surprised many, considering the party was polling in the single digits before Sunday's vote.

Indeed, PO will probably end up forming a coalition with them in most of the voivodship parliaments nationwide. This will, in turn, strengthen PSL's hand in its dealings with coalition partner PO at the national level.

PSL, being a party mostly representative of farmers and rural folk, will of course oppose any moves which could hurt its electorate, such as the proposed reform of the much criticized KRUS, a state-subsidized pension for farmers that costs the government billions of złoty every year.

PO will thus most probably continue on its road down “the politics of small steps” – as the PM calls it – and will not undertake any major reforms in the next year, especially since there will be parliamentary elections in 2011.

As long as those steps are taken forward and not backward, then at least that's better than no steps at all.