euro|topics - Poland's election campaign

Main focus of Monday, October 15, 2007

Poland's election campaign

The Polish election campaign has entered its final phase before the vote on Sunday October 21th. One week ahead of the early parliamentary elections, opposition leader Donald Tusk (PO) and Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński crossed swords in a TV debate. According to the opinion polls, Tusk emerged as the clear winner, but it's unclear whether this will have an impact on voter turnout or on the outcome of the elections.

Newsweek Polska - Poland

The news weekly's chief editor, Michal Kobosko, comments on the TV debate between Donald Tusk and Jarosław Kaczyński: "The PO leader, widely thought to be doomed to failure, excelled himself and beat the born winner Jarosław Kaczyński. Tusk's fans talked of a knockout, while the prime minister's supporters concealed their feelings behind the word 'tie'. ... But the frequently asked question of why most of those entitled to vote in Poland don't go to the polls remains unanswered. A well-known political expert recently said he was contemplating switching careers because of this. There's something wrong with the Poles. In the new member states of Europe, as well as in the so-called old democracies, average voter turnout is between 70 and 80 percent. Ours is 30 percentage points lower than average. It's understandable and logical that the poorly educated vote less frequently, but the majority of our young people don't vote either." (15/10/2007)

Neue Zürcher Zeitung - Switzerland

In Ulrich Schmid's opinion, Donald Tusk performed better than Jarosław Kaczyński in last Friday's TV debate: "Tusk seemed fresher and above all better prepared, while Kaczynski seemed distracted at times and was unable to come up with convincing arguments for taking credit for the economic boom. ... Most of the countless political observers, including conservatives, saw the debate as a victory for Tusk. The public seemed to share this view and the PO recovered the ground it had lost in the opinion polls over the last few days. On Saturday around 30 percent of respondents favoured the PO, with the PiS close on its heels. However the new love doesn't seem to have lasted for long. According to the PGB Institute, on Sunday the PiS had already regained a six percentage point lead." (15/10/2007)

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung - Germany

"This year everything is different," notes Konrad Schuller referring to Donald Tusk's election campaign for the PO: "Tusk adopted a clear stance at an early stage in the campaign. In interviews he unhesitatingly described himself as 'pro-German' (something his advisers considered political suicide two years ago), and in Friday's debate he aggressively defended his liberalism with the argument that the millions of emigrants to Ireland and England are living proof of how many Poles see their future in a free, open-minded environment, rather than in the Kaczynski twins' allegedly 'united' Poland. But in strategic terms the most crucial point is that in contrast to 2005, Tusk has promised never to work together with a party under the Kaczynski brothers' leadership after the elections." (15/10/2007)

Mladá fronta DNES - Czech Republic

Adam Michnik, chief editor of the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza, criticises the current Polish government under the Kaczyński brothers. In an interview with Magdalena Sodomková, he defends former Czech president Václav Havel, who has proposed that international observers be brought in to monitor the upcoming elections: "These Polish illiterates can neither read nor hear what Havel said. ... As for the Kaczyńskis, their foreign policy is compromising our country. Once Poland was a respected authority, but now it's isolated. You just need to look at the way the Kaczynskis have behaved towards the Germans ... as if Angela Merkel were Adolf Hitler's little sister. I'm not saying we shouldn't assert our interests, but not with this kind of language. I know this language. This is the way the Serbs and Croats spoke to each other when war broke out on the Balkans." (15/10/2007)

» To the complete press review of Monday, October 15, 2007

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