The ruling party is now mulling shifting the date of the vote to either May 17 or May 23 — but the legal basis for making such a last-minute change is hotly disputed.
Former presidents and prime ministers are calling for a boycott, the European Commission and foreign observers are increasingly alarmed at the disarray around the vote, and the ruling nationalist government may even fall over the issue.
If things were normal, about a quarter of a million staff would have already been trained, polling stations readied and candidates engaged in the final, frenetic few days of electioneering ahead of a mandatory halt to campaigning on midnight Friday.
But this is not an ordinary year thanks to Covid-19, which has killed 683 in Poland and infected 13,937 as of Monday.
The government locked the country down on March 15, essentially halting normal campaigning by ending political rallies. While the opposition candidates tried to figure out how to proceed, incumbent Andrzej Duda, backed by the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, soared in opinion polls thanks to blanket coverage in the state-controlled media as he and the government announced measures to combat the coronavirus.
The pandemic has created serious doubts about the safety of holding a traditional election. There is a way to delay the vote — the government could declare a state of natural catastrophe, which delays any election until 90 days after such a state is lifted.
But it refuses to take that step. Instead, it wants to hold an election with only postal ballots — the first time that Poland has ever attempted such a feat. A law on holding a postal ballot was rushed through parliament last month, although Polish law doesn’t allow changing rules less than six months before an election. The legislation is now stuck in the opposition-controlled upper chamber Senate, from where it’s expected to return to the lower house on Wednesday.
That hasn’t stopped the government from bending the rules and beginning to print mail-in electoral ballots despite there being no law in place. There are also serious doubts about how such a rushed procedure would keep ballots secure, permit Poles outside the country to take part, and allow an honest vote count.
Duda is keen for the election to happen. „I’d ask you to take part in the election and I’m asking for your vote,“ the president said Friday during a video campaign rally.
That’s creating a huge dilemma for the opposition — boycott and allow Duda to romp home with an easy victory and hold power for another five years, or fight in an election which has raised questions about fairness and legality.
Donald Tusk, the former European Council president and ex-Polish prime minister who founded the opposition Civic Platform party, is calling for a boycott.
„These elections aren’t elections in the legal sense,“ Tusk said last week, „because they will be neither free nor equal. The changes made to the electoral law are unconstitutional.“
That’s led Małgorzata Kidawa-Błońska, his party’s floundering presidential candidate, to announce the confusing position of backing the boycott but not ending her campaign. She’s slumping in opinion polls — a new one has Duda at 63 percent and Kidawa-Błońska at 2 percent — in large measure because many of her supporters are saying they won’t turn up to vote.
For more polling data from across Europe visit POLITICO Poll of Polls.
Government backers argue that boycott calls are simply sour grapes from an opposition unlikely to defeat Duda.
„A week before the election and Poles don’t know when they’ll be voting. The Senate and the opposition are responsible for this mess,“ Sasin said.
However, the same pollster that gave Duda a huge lead also asked how voters would act if the election were held in the future without the danger of coronavirus: In that case, Duda would get 42 percent in the first round of the election, meaning he’d have to face off against the top opposition vote-getter in a second round.
Tusk’s boycott call is backed by most former presidents and prime ministers.
„The procedure of correspondence voting in the form and time as proposed by the ruling party is a pseudo-election. We will not take part in them. We hope that candidates and voters who share our concern for the democratic future of Poland will do the same,“ a group of them said in a statement.
The head of the National Electoral Commission — a body that’s been sidelined by the government in organizing this election — has doubts that a vote can be held on Sunday.
„From the organizational standpoint, it is not possible,“ Sylwester Marciniak told the Dziennik Gazeta Prawna newspaper, adding, „There are too few days left to hold an election. There would have to be a miracle to allow them to take place.“
It’s part of broader doubts about the fairness of the election.
“If I were the Polish citizen, I would have many questions because I would really like to have fair access to the voting. I would like to see the candidates campaigning in a fair campaign time and I think these are the questions especially which should be asked on Polish territory,” Věra Jourová, vice president of the European Commission, said last week.
Not all the candidates are throwing in the towel.
Two centrists, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz of the Polish People’s Party and Szymon Hołownia, an independent, are continuing to campaign (both are polling ahead of Kidawa-Błońska), as is right-winger Krzysztof Bosak.
Kosiniak-Kamysz has said he „won’t give up Poland in a walkover,“ saying in an interview Monday that he’s not interested in „theatrical boycotts.“
„Today, we’re on the eve of a week that will determine whether Poland remains a free democratic country, or if it takes a big step in the direction of a dictatorship,“ Hołownia said on Sunday.
The no-holds-barred effort to hold an election is pushing the ruling party to the breaking point.
A junior coalition partner of PiS is threatening to break ranks this week in the vote over holding a postal election — something that’s likely to happen on Wednesday or Thursday.
Its leader, former Deputy Prime Minister Jarosław Gowin, is being frantically lobbied by the opposition to walk out of the coalition, which would deprive PiS of a parliamentary majority and allow for the formation of a new government.
„I see no organizational possibility for elections to take place on May 10,“ Gowin said over the weekend. „Every day strengthens my view.“
Source: politico.com
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