Tusk has returned to the Polish frontier to confront the old enemy of Reuters By Kaczynski

By Alan Charlish and Anna Koper

WARSAW (Reuters) – Former European Council President Donald Tusk returned to Polish political arena on Saturday, leading Jaroslaw Kaczynski as leader of the main opposition party in a move to revive a duel with his old enemy.

For many of the Liberal Civic Platform (PO) parties that Tusk helped, the bets are on the future of Poland only in the European Union.

The elections scheduled for 2023 will determine whether the Kaczynski-led nationalist Law and Justice Party (PiS) will continue its government conflict with Brussels over reforms that include issues that the EU violates the independence of judges and LGBT rights.

“The Civic Platform is essential, it is needed as a force, not as a memory, to win the fight against the future PiS,” Tusk said at a PO congress in Warsaw. “Without the Citizens’ Platform there is no chance of victory, and our history tells us that.”

The very personal and highly emblematic rivalry between Tusk and Kaczynski is the division between the European economic and social liberalism of the PO and the conservative social values ​​of the PiS and the leftist economy, which largely defines the Polish political landscape. .

Speaking at the PiS congress in Warsaw on Saturday, the last time the leader was elected, Kaczynski said there were improvements in PiS’s standard of living ahead of his tenure.

“This group (the elite) had to dominate … (and) everyone else would agree to have a humble, bad and sometimes unhappy life,” he said.

“We have recovered … the dignity of the people, the dignity of the work by raising wages, a very significant increase in pensions, raising the minimum wage.”

THREE WAYS

The announcement of Tusk’s return came after talks between the new leader, former Borys Budka, and Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, who was also a candidate for leadership.

President of the Council of Europe From 2014 to 2019, Tusk helped lead the European Union in a turbulent period marked by Brexit and the migration crisis.

The prime minister in the post-communist history of Poland won two terms, and ruled the PO from 2007 to 2014.

In the global financial crisis, he avoided the recession in Poland under Tusk’s leadership, but the government looked increasingly distant with the problems of Poles who were not younger and richer Poles.

Returning to Polish politics, Tusk will have to deal with the problem, as some party analysts say he has made an effort to set his agenda and get in touch with voters because his basic middle class, beyond the city’s electorate, is not about minimum records. surveys.

“The largest opposition party is experiencing the biggest crisis in its history … Many voters who don’t like PiS don’t want to vote for the PO,” said Rafal Chwedoruk, a political scientist at the University of Warsaw.

PO, a civic coalition group with 126 deputies in the Polish parliament against 230 in the governing coalition, is third in the poll by Catholic journalist Szymon Holownia’s Poland 2050 party, whose center-right agenda echoes many of the Basic PO voters.

In addition, many younger voters view the party’s cautious stance, such as abortion and LGBT rights.

However, PiS is having trouble sustaining an increasingly fragile United Right coalition and has seen its number of polls fall this year.

Recently, three lawmakers left the party because of the main “Polish Agreement” program, which the party says most Poles will assume will pay less in taxes but critics say it punishes small business owners and the middle class.