Season 2 Episode 2

Speakers: Jakub Parusinski & Jakub Górnicki

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Jakub: Hello and welcome back to Power Lines: From Ukraine to the World, a podcast from Message Heard and the Kyiv Independent. I'm Jakub Parusinski. Each week we're going to be analysing the undercurrents of the war in Ukraine, bringing you analysis from across the globe to explain its context and consequences as the war continues.

This week, we're continuing our look into politics across Europe, focusing on some elections that could change the nature of the conflict in Ukraine. And on Sunday, October 15th, we saw one of the most pivotal elections in Europe this year in Poland.

So, Poland has been ruled by Law and Justice known as PiS, in their Polish acronym for the past eight years. And in that time, it's basically become a poster child for a illiberal, alt-right and other strong men driven countries around the world.

The PiS government built up a system that was observed and emulated by strong men from Erdogan in Turkey to Netanyahu in Israel, and of course, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, for how to basically make their countries more authoritarian while still staying above the line of what actually constitutes a dictatorship.

And things got bad. PiS took control of the media, of the courts, limited women's rights leading to millions protesting on the streets of Poland every couple of months for different reasons.

To understand just how significant the propaganda was, Timothy Garton Ash, a commentator on Poland once said that Polish state television makes Fox News look like the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The level of propaganda was simply atrocious.

On the other side, we have an opposition that is mostly pro-European liberal, and then has various shadings from centre right to centre left. Mostly it's the Civic Coalition, which is a sort of Christian Democrat kind of party.

There is now Third Way, which is a combination of a centrist and a agrarian party, as well as the New Left, which is a very classical social democrat, European political platform.

But what really made the difference in these elections is the return of Donald Tusk, the former president of the European Council and former Prime Minister of Poland. He and Jarosław Kaczyński, a leader of PiS, have a feud going on for decades at this point.

And both figures are rather polarising. They have their lovers and their haters, but they're both coming at the question with very different views of where the country should be.

Jarosław Kaczyński sees Poland as a country that needs to be a sovereign nation, relatively isolated from the world, traditional, conservative, very much in the likes of the kind of strong men regimes that you have across the Eurasian supercontinent.

Tusk, as the former president of the European Council, has quite a different vision. He sees a Poland that's in Europe, that is actively engaged with the West, and that champions what I would call classical humanist values with a certain level of liberalism, both in the economy and society.

And then on the edge, we have Confederation, a openly anti-Ukrainian, anti-European and rather pro-Russian organisation of far-right nationals who have been pulling PiS to the right.

So, what was the result? Well, Poland's lower house of parliament, which is really decisive here, has 460 seats, and you need 230 of them to have a vote of confidence and start a new government.

Law and Justice was hoping to get at least in that vicinity, potentially with the addition of the votes from Konfederacja. And it didn't get there. It got 194 seats. And with Konfederacja’s 18, only gets to 212 seats.

The coalition of opposition parties, including the Civic Coalition, the Third Way, and the New Left, got a total of 248 enough to form the government. But that doesn't mean that they will take power straight away. Actually, the road ahead could be rather challenging, and the process could go on for a while, which we'll talk about later.

So, why does all of this matter for Ukraine? Well, first of all, Poland is the logistical hub of the whole war. It is the essential piece in Ukraine being able to continue the fight.

And Konfederacja, for example, has issued threats that they would create disruptions to the airport in Rzeszów, for the train station in Przemyśl, both key choke points for moving things in and out of Ukraine.

But the Polish-Ukrainian relationship is about much more. There are long economic ties. There are millions of Ukrainians currently living in Poland, and the two countries have a shared if difficult history.

Relations between the two have actually gotten quite bad in recent months due to a couple of feuds, including a notorious grain ban.

The elections now offer a fresh start, but perhaps even something more for Ukraine, with a potential prime ministership of Donald Tusk. Again, a leader of the European Union in the past, Ukraine has a potential partner that could fast track its path to the European Union if it's able to engage Poland effectively.

Whether that will happen or not is something that we talked about this week with Jakub Górnicki, a journalist and media manager from Poland.

Jakub is the founder of Outriders, a Polish news organisation that writes about global issues for a Polish audience. He's been covering the war in Ukraine for years and even more so since the full-scale invasion.

So, I invited him onto Power Lines to discuss what happened last week in Poland, what it means for the country's often fractious relationship with Ukraine, and how it will change the face of European politics more generally.

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Jakub, welcome to Power Lines.

Górnicki: Hello, Jakub. Thank you for having me.

Jakub: Could you just to start us off, tell us a little bit about your work?

Górnicki: So, I work in the organisation called the Outriders. We provide Polish audience with the news and updates about different events which happen outside of Poland, whether it's breaking events or important events such as Russian invasion in Ukraine, or currently the conflict in Israel and Palestine, or we produce stories about environmental issues, migration and so on.

Jakub: And you have an extensive experience in Ukraine, which I would love to get to a little bit later because this is also one of the important dimensions to consider.

But before that, I think first of all, we need to say we're recording this on the late afternoon of Tuesday, October 17th. The final tally is in, it looks very much like a confirmed victory for the opposition coalition.

Górnicki: Yes.

Jakub: What is the mood like right now in Poland?

Górnicki: So, first of all, I think the majority of people is happy because we have to say that those three parties, which are considered the Democratic, the liberal opposition, have gathered 4 million votes more than Law and Justice, PiS, how you want to call them.

So, the party, which has been ruling for the past eight years, and for sometimes still, whether it's days or weeks, depending how the transition of power will happen, will be in power.

So, that's the first thing. I think the most important factor besides the win of course, of the opposition is that over 74% of Polish people eligible to vote went to actually do it, which is the highest turnaround in the history of Polish democracy. It's even more than 1989 elections, although they were partially free, let's say, but considered important.

And then later on, I mean, there have been elections where there was like 50 something percent of the people showing up to the vote. Whereas this 74, that's basically, three out of four people in many districts.

In Warsaw, I think it's around 84, 85%, with some districts with 90%, which is incredible, which shows how important those elections have been to the Polish society. It gives, I think enormous legitimacy and also pressure for the soon to be the new government.

But it also shows, I think the commitment to certain values, which Poland stands for and the Polish people stand for. It's clear in which direction the society wants to go. It's also clear what the society doesn't want, and especially what was pissing people off, I think, especially during the second term of the Law and Justice which is 2019, up until now.

Jakub: I think first we just need to spend a moment, for two Polish guys, this should come quite naturally and just talk about why Poland is so important.

I think one thing to bear in mind, and this came across in conversations that I've had with people all over the world, there's been a trend towards this kind of, whatever you want to call it, nationalistic, conservative, alt-right, Eurosceptic, people who sort of shy away from liberalism and globalisation and all of this kind of values.

And Poland was very much a poster child for that movement. It hosted that movement. Poland was the centre of this rebirth of illiberal civilization. So, I think that's a really important aspect to it.

And the attempt to take over or sort of for the opposition to win, it failed in Turkey, it failed in Hungary, it failed in so many countries. So, I think that's a huge symbolic win, I think, all over the world. Is that something that's present in Poland as well, this feeling?

Górnicki: Yeah, I think so. There is couple of reasons why we managed to break out of this. It's first of all, I think that we still — even though, especially the state-owned media, the public TV channel and public radio stations, although they have been controlled by the government, and they have become a tube of really disgusting propaganda, still when it comes to the media operating on the free market.

Besides the local press being bought out by them government controlled state-owned petro company, by the way, that has the flow of free information and the amazing work, many investigative reporters and all the other media, that has been one of the key things which led to this.

But on the other thing, I think what's really important is that simply this government didn't notice how the society is changing. And that the Polish people are becoming more progressive. Our society has more migrants in it.

Jakub: Yeah.

Górnicki: And not only Ukraine, but people from different countries. And that the fabric of the society is simply different. The needs are different. And at the end of the day, I think the arrogance mixed with the brutality of propaganda is something what made people like saying, just, this is not what we want.

And the fact that we still were able to vote, but be surrounded mostly, most of us by the access to the free information. And I think of in the end a very good campaign led by the three opposition parties and very bad campaign by the Law and Justice Party.

Jakub: Yeah. So, I wanted to ask you, everyone talks about free and fair elections. Was this election free and was it fair, the two sort of separately?

Górnicki: No, I don't think it was fair election, especially because we are talking about state controlled our public media. They have law which they should obey, which is serve all the public. Whereas it was serving basically the needs of one party, which was ruling.

And they were not, for example, showing any public meetings, public gatherings of any of the opposition parties. We had the same situation in 2020 during the presidential elections. Many people believed that if that coverage of that election would be back then held more fairly, the outcome could be different.

Because the difference between Duda, Andrzej Duda, our current president and Rafał Trzaskowski who was the runner up was just very little.

So, I think that was the lesson learned also from that 2020, also, the fact that opposition politicians came back to the public broadcaster, they stopped boycotting it and so on. It was never pleasant. Watching this was just disgusting.

But the fact that they went, and they entered that field, I think was also crucial. It also showed people that they really want to make the change. And I think that feeling that they can win was something crucial for all the voters.

Because in the last elections, you couldn't feel that yes, the opposition can win. That feeling was not there. Whereas this time people really believed that the change is possible. And I think this is also what motivated people to go to elections in such a high number as they did.

Jakub: Okay. I'm going to move on to sort of what happens next. But just one final question that I'm curious about. So, Poland was for a long time, the playbook of how do you build an authoritarian society.

Górnicki: Mm-Hmm (affirmative).

Jakub: Was the performance of the opposition so good that it now has a playbook of how to bring it apart? Or did they get lucky?

Górnicki: Well, actually, a comeback of the opposition to power began in the end of 2020, when the Law and Justice using the constitutional tribunal, made a change to the abortion law, rendering it from rigorous to basically non-existent.

And the massive protests, which began back then, where I think if we were going back, this is where basically Law and Justice started to lose, first of all, they lost 10% of the popularity in impulse, and they never basically made it back.

Second thing, it led to creation of many women movement. It woken up a lot of people in the civic society.

Later on, we have, I think the very important moment was still the return of Donald Tusk to the politics. Whether someone agrees with him or not, he changed the game.

Jakub: He's a political force. I mean, to be reckoned with. Yeah.

Górnicki: He's a political force. He made unpopular moves among voters of the Democratic opposition, which later people started to understand, in many cases. He took a very hard stand on the migration. He wasn't falling for all the traps which were being set for him by the government propaganda.

He said he will not take down the wall, for example, on the Polish by the Russian border. And so on and so on. So, and for that, he was criticised by some of the opinion leaders, even among other oppositions.

But later on, people understood that he understands the game slightly better. And I used the game because it was kind of set up like this. You have to understand when you fight with such powers that well, you have to play differently.

And then I think, in the end, also very important role here was I think the Russian invasion in Ukraine. And the question of security, of feeling secure played an important role.

In all the surveys of Polish society, the safety is number one, number two issue, generally understood. People feel that with this conflict, with the situation, still ongoing migration situation on Polish by the Russian border.

Jakub: Let's look at what the road ahead has for us. And the coalition has won on paper. PiS has already announced that they will be various deputies, have announced that they will be a difficult opposition, that they will try to drive a wedge between the coalition partners. They'll try to make this whole thing fall apart.

But first we have the decisions of actually forming a government. And so, the president has to nominate a PM. Historically, that was from the biggest party, so now it would be PiS, although on paper the constitution says that it should be somebody who is selected by the majority of parliament.

Then we have 14 days to form a coalition, get a vote of confidence. How sort of comfortable are people in Warsaw and across Poland feeling today that this good news will translate into a good result in the coming weeks, or by the end of the year?

Górnicki: I think there is understanding that they'll do what they can to prolong this process and to use this extra time and push those deadlines to the maximum in order to prepare different straps, in order to still take some money out of different companies.

Winter is coming for them, and they have to somehow control it. Although it's still unclear. We may be surprised, of course, maybe the president will just nominate actually the opposition. It's very hard to judge.

Historically, only on a couple of occasions, I mean our president, Andrzej Duda, he has, let's say, did something against the party, which he represents, which is Law and Justice.

So, I think this will be a surprise if he suddenly would say, okay, I understand that it's pointless to nominate a PM from Law and Justice because this person anyhow, will not get a confirmation vote in the Parliament. So, it's just wasted time.

But I think at this stage, I would be leaning towards that he will still do it. We mentioned four parties here. So, the winning Law and Justice, the three liberal opposition parties, the Civic Platform, or the Civic Coalition, the third road, and then the New-leftist, Nowa Lewica.

And then there is the Konfederacja, Confederation, which consists of more far-right people. But even this Confederation doesn't want to enter any coalition with Law and Justice, plus, even if they were to, they still don't have enough votes together to do this. So, it's just going to be like waste of time.

It's not going to be easy, first of all, right now, it's for the opposition, they know how much they got. So, that will probably transfer into how many ministers you get, which of the key positions. So, it's not going to be a process that boom, two days, and it's done.

Jakub: Yeah.

Górnicki: We have to also remember that President Andrzej Duda will remain in power and basically for two more years, slightly less. And he has the right to veto according to how the Polish political system works. If he vetoes it, then if he vetoes it and the opposition doesn't have enough power, they would need 270 something votes.

So, it's going to be a process, when I think the expectation would be that the President would be rather, well, not helping, I would say the government, let's put it this way, diplomatically.

Jakub: So, zooming out a little bit to Poland's role in the region, which is quite significant. I mean, this is Poland as a motor of the European union's economy. It's the sixth biggest economy, and it's been growing for almost uninterrupted, if not for COVID for over three decades.

So, this is an important country. It is at the middle of the three Cs initiative of building infrastructure in the east of the European Union, which I would say is de desperately needed.

And if you want proof, just try to visit Prague, Warsaw, and Riga on the same two days, it's not that easy. The connections in the whole region are pretty poor, and there's a pivotal role for Poland there.

And then most importantly, I guess it's about Ukraine. Poland is the logistics hub for the war in Ukraine. Konfederacja, I think, threatened openly, not so openly that they're going to make life difficult for Ukraine, blocking the airports in Rzeszów, the station in Przemysl, and other things like that.

Well, how do you see sort of Poland's role in the region going forward, especially towards Ukraine, where it's playing such an important role?

Górnicki: Okay, so before I jump to Ukraine, quickly on EU, but I think this will be the starting point for the government. It'll change for the region one thing, up until today, first of all Poland and Hungary were vetoing things in EU.

And I think, it would drastically change things for Viktor Orbán because he doesn't like to be the only person to veto things. Then he could come back to his people and say, okay, look, it's not only us, it's also Poland blocking things. So, it's different.

Right now, it's going to probably going to be only him. So, this will change a rapidly for him. Although we've had also a change differently in Slovakia with the Prime Minister Fico coming back, which is very much openly anti-Ukrainian.

But in the so-called crat states, I think Poland going back into more pro-European course will be something which will play a very important role. And this will for sure transfer into the relations with Ukraine, which started off when the Russian invasion began.

And I think the first year they were just like a poster relations when it comes to a country in need and a country which is helping. But as the elections were approaching, it was easier, for example, to sneak in those anti-Ukrainian sentiments, different narratives.

There are unfinished, unresolved issues between Poland and Ukraine given the history. And that is always this window which allows those actors, whether they are domestic or foreign, meaning Russian here, to misuse them in order to spike them up.

And we've seen a lot of those activities, especially last in between two months. Law and Justice adopted a lot of anti-Ukrainian rhetorics from the Konfederacja. They noticed that they were losing some voters, and Konfederacja was gaining them running on this largely anti-Ukrainian agenda.

And that, of course, was sparked by the crisis when it comes to the Ukrainian grain, how the government mishandled it. And this is where opposition was already saying last year that the solution, which the government proposed was bad, and that it is going to be … in a way the government implemented it, will very soon lead to problems on internal Polish market.

And this happened, and that turned to be ugly. What happened around the UN summit in New York, President Zelenskyy, our prime minister. President Duda actually tried to save the situation, and it seemed that they managed to negotiate something, when the next day Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, Polish Prime Minister came out and basically said something again, anti-Ukrainian government. And after this, it kind of stopped, but it was-

Jakub: So, just to clarify, this is the statement about Poland not delivering weapons to Ukraine. I mean, they were purposely provocative, I think, people defended Morawiecki. What he said was that we are not currently delivering weapons to Ukraine.

But the point was not that, the point was to make a sound bite that would go around and kind of say that, look, we don't have to be friends. Don't disrespect us.

I'm wondering, you mentioned sort of the three members of the coalition, the most interesting one from this perspective, I think is Third Way, because it takes a lot of this historically PSL, which was an agrarian party, and it has a very agrarian base. Is that sort of the weak member of the coalition that PiS can potentially target to take things apart?

Górnicki: No, no, no. Because they understand that they actually received an extra vote from people who are afraid that they're not going to make it to the parliament. I know many people personally, who are like saying, okay, I would vote for this party, but damn if they don't enter the parliament and the whole thing collapses and the Law and Justice stays in power.

I don't think that they're going to break because they will not have life in politics for sure, if they would rebel. Plus, everybody knows how Law and Justice treats its coalition partners.

Jakub: So, that's quite interesting. The reason that I'm thinking about that is Ukraine entering the EU, which is sort of where the long-term perspective is here, is very disruptive for the EU, just given how big Ukraine's agricultural sector is.

Górnicki: Yes.

Jakub: And directly, it also impacts Poland because a lot of the-

Górnicki: Well, it affects many countries in EU, it's France, so it's not only Poland.

Jakub: And so, I'm wondering whether this will be — because there will be challenges ahead. And there is the previous government that was run by the same people as are now in the coalition, the opposition coalition was to a large extent brought down by, in my opinion, Russian Special Service Operations.

The secret recordings of politicians in restaurants, and there's been multiple sort of reports that have intelligence services fingerprints all over them. That desire to have Poland fail, have Ukraine fail, is still there. Right?

Górnicki: Of course.

Jakub: Where is it going to target, that's kind of my question.

Górnicki: I mean, first of all, even this scandal which you're mentioning, it was never properly actually understood. And I don't think Law and Justice had any interest in actually making it understandable for the people, because there was a big chance that, hey, we have to tell people that we are actually in power because of some Russian intelligence operation.

That was many reasons. We have to be also fair that in 2015, a lot of people were fed up by the Civic Platform, and they've had a really bad campaign. They also have been in power back then for eight years, and they've been simply used and kind of Law and Justice when I was looking at their campaign, it really reminded me of that. And then it just tired, arrogant, disconnected from people.

But I cannot compare the level of this arrogance to what was happening in 2015 with the Civic Platform. Those are two totally different dimensions.

Now, just going back slowly to Ukraine. So, I think first of all, the, I'm going to say opposition because they haven't yet formed the government, and that's kind of easier, I have to switch my mind. They would not sacrifice Polish-Ukrainian relations just to get some extra votes. I think this is the difference between liberal and illiberal opposition.

The second thing, I think one of the things which is important for the new government is to use this opportunity which was created last year to finally resolve all the issues quickly between Poland and Ukraine. Those historical things, have both sides address it, because I think this is a window, if it's going to be left open, Russians will always use it, always.

And frankly speaking, Poland has this PiS protest between Poland and Germany after 1999. Just journalists involved, think tanks, different institutions. And if Poland was able to somehow resolve things with Germany, the problems between Poland and Ukraine are nothing compared to those.

And I think this is really important, which is those holes in our history, they have to be really fixed. Given how much willingness is there towards this, I think from Polish people and from Ukrainian people.

And I'm not saying here politicians, because that's unfortunately different problems for some politicians, it always would be tempting not to do it because then they can use this in their agenda and so on.

And even using this moment right now where Ukrainian politics, although slightly more active in recent months than last year, it's still I think a good moment where I would really use this opportunity to just say, okay, if we want to go into to the next level, which is needed for many important things, which is A, helping Ukraine join EU, B helping Ukraine join NATO, and then C, once this goes, help Belarus also achieve democracy.

But there it going to be much more complicated. And Ukraine entering EU is a problem on a couple levels. First of all, it's a big country, so the number of votes and so on. And if Ukraine would enter EU, it would allow Eastern Europe to be actually very active, when it comes to votes and so on.

So, I think this would make this shift that EU would be more balanced in all dimensions, south, north, east, west. Right now, France and Germany, given their population and population gives you power when it comes to votes in the parliament and so on. So, that's the first thing.

Second figure is there will be challenges, I think, to the very important voting groups for many countries, but it's only a question how you tackle it. I think, if you create programs helping, and I've recently read that there were some ideas how to help the Polish farmers to prepare for this situation.

When at some point Ukraine is joining EU, even if it's fast-tracked, we are talking couple years away also, one thing is to join EU, but then EU has those different levels of-

Jakub: It's a process, yeah.

Górnicki: Of joining when it comes to … and so on. I think the current opposition understands the importance of Ukraine joining both EU and NATO, that this is a super goal for pollens security, but it's not going to be easy for certain parts of Polish society.

Jakub: So, just to double down on that and maybe sort of, I think that's also a good place to wrap things together. It will require social change on both sides. And you've travelled to Ukraine extensively before the full-scale invasion, and especially after many of the Outriders journalists are there, were based there, let me put it this way. What do Poles not understand about Ukrainians? What do Ukrainians not understand about Poles?

Górnicki: I may actually not have the most popular opinion here, but for me, what I was thinking, especially during the first days and first weeks of the war, is that both Polish and Ukrainian society send a signal to politicians saying, our requires are not that important, and just stop this shit, solve it. When it comes to really big issues, we are here to support each other.

And I think that is something on what we have to build. When it comes to understanding, I think right now we actually understand quite well, very well. I mean, there's so many Ukrainians in Poland, less of course, than it has been last year.

And a lot of Ukrainians have come back to Ukraine. Some have left to different countries, but a lot has stayed probably for longer. In my daughter's class, 20 pupils, three of them are from Ukraine, for example, currently. So, that gives you an idea. There was more last year, a lot of them have return.

So, I think the fabric of the Polish society has changed. And I think, unfortunately for Ukraine, a lot of those people will stay for longer. For example, here, especially when you have kids and those kids start to integrate, develop friends, it's much, much harder for parents to relocate back and so on, once a certain level of integration.

When it comes to understanding, I think, it's a matter of inter interpretation of certain facts. And I think always the best concept here was EU always, these days we look at EU as the, like money pot, whereas EU was invented, the money was not the goal. The money, the joint market, was a mean to stop the conflicts in Europe.

And that was, I think, the beauty of it. And I always hope that you'll be more talking about its original vision than just the financial side of it, because then it just becomes numbers.

Whereas it's all about solidarity and helping the different divides created, especially by the Second World War in many European countries being under Soviet rule or communist rule for many years.

I don't know. I mean, there is nothing super specific here. It's just about confronting those facts from two sides, being open, being able to respect the other side, look on it and then saying, okay, this is what you think, this is what I think. Let's digest it on both sides, and let's not jump emotionally just because someone said something like this.

I think different sites have different looks on certain things. One is vowing, the second thing is for Lviv, the sentiments towards Lviv. Polish society, and which is used always by Russian saying, “Poles, they want the Lviv back.”

So, it's about confronting this and it's different like saying, okay, yes, Lviv is today in Ukraine, but hey, once upon a time, it was an important centre of Polish intelligence and so and so on and so on.

And just adopting those two things. I always say it's really funny, one of the joint facts is that the first football game for Poles and Ukrainians is the same game. So, that's maybe a good starting point, sport as a uniting field.

And the other way is just finding those commonalities rather than things will divide, as a good starting point.

Jakub: Certainly, an optimistic sort of message. I imagine that's going around in Warsaw, this optimism these days. Jakub, thank you so much for joining us on Power Lines.

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Górnicki: Thank you for having me. I'm always a huge fan.

Jakub: Thanks so much for listening to Powerlines: From Ukraine to the World. To find more podcasts like Power Lines, look up Message Heard wherever you're listening to this podcast, and find us on our website, messageheard.com or on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook by looking up at Message Heard.

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