Polish conservative re-election hinges on regional vote

If Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party can translate its looming general election triumph on Sunday into a second term in office, it will be because of towns like Lowicz.

Just 80km west of Warsaw, the frantic, liberal capital, is a conservative, cobblestoned church-filled home to 25,000 people, vast fields of fruit and vegetable production and Poland’s third-largest dairy co-op.

Two major historic figures have passed this way: Napoleon spent the night here in 1806, fresh from victory in Jena; in 1999 Pope John Paul II praised Lowicz as home for centuries of Polish primates.

Lowicz is known as an electoral bellwether that reflects national results and, like the country, was once politically balanced. In 2015 it began a dramatic swing towards PiS and in last year’s European elections scored 57 per cent. On Sunday it would be happy with 10 points less.

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Sitting in his office, a crucifix on the wall overhead, deputy mayor Boguslaw Bonczak – a political independent like the mayor – says locals like how PiS “keep their word”.

“That’s very important,” says Bonczak. “But what has really convinced the electorate, in opinion, is the social programme that PiS started.”

If re-elected, PiS is promising to introduce a 2,600 zloty (€600) monthly minimum wage by next year. It’s an idea that is proving as popular as a 500 zloty (€115) welfare payment for each child introduced after taking office four years ago. Back then, inside the Warsaw political bubble, such contributions were either belittled as peanuts or demonised as expensive statism. Four years on, the money goes a long way in small towns such as Lowicz.

‘Dysfunctional families’

Collecting her daughter from an orange-painted primary school, Katarzyna says the PiS welfare policy has secured the party her vote on Sunday. “It is so important for parents so they can spend a bit more on their children, such as pay for the extracurricular courses,” she says.

Smoking on a nearby bench as she waits for her son, another mother, Bozena, disagrees. She’s fed up with politics, arguing the 500 zloty payment penalises working mothers and encourages “dysfunctional families” to produce extra children.

In the offices of the local newspaper, Nowy Lowiczanin, editor Wojciech Waligórski dismisses as overly simplistic claims that, with its welfare policies, PiS has simply bribed Polish voters with their own tax money.

Instead he links rising PiS support to a sense, after years of drift, of a palpable political shift and a real will to balance family- and business-friendly policies.

Many locals here with long daily commutes to Warsaw hope, for instance, for jobs at the new airport PiS is promising to build 40km away. These issues are more important in Lowicz, he says, than political scandals or fights over controversial judicial reform.

“The town is divided on the courts but, generally, it is not something that really touches the hearts of people,” says Waligórski.

Recent sociological studies suggest PiS voters in towns like Lowicz and beyond are far more savvy than their reputation suggests. Support for the ruling party today is far more diverse than its original base of rural, low-income conservative Catholics.

“PiS would have never acquired such a high result [in 2015] had it not been for the middle-class support,” noted sociologist Maciej Gdula in a study about a medium-sized Polish town. “PiS won among the private business owners and people with higher education [both about 30 per cent].”

Another report suggests PiS has a solid 35 per cent base and 20 per cent floating reserve that is open for election offers.

‘Legitimation through scandal’

After three disillusioning decades of democracy, the report by Warsaw University sociologists suggests Polish voters are increasingly cynical and ready to vote strategically for a winning party or one with narrow policies promising individual benefit. Aiding PiS politicians in power is a second growing phenomenon of “legitimation through scandal”, it says.

“Poles disapprove of theft . . . [but see it] as necessary in order for their party to stay in power,” the report suggests. “This kind of corruption is seen as acceptable in service to the greater good. A politician will not lose the confidence of voters for breaking the law in a way that benefits the party.”

For report co-author Przemyslaw Sadura, the political bounce for PiS ahead of Sunday’s poll is linked to cynicism that indulges political missteps in exchange for personal gain for voters.

“It’s a result of low social capital in Poland: a lack of trust in institutions, governments, political parties,” he says. “They don’t believe institutions will deliver public goods and that it’s better to take offers of support in cash, such as the child allowance.”

Back in Lowicz, deputy mayor Boguslaw Bonczak says his PiS-supporting neighbours and friends are unashamed about their motives, notably as a political means to personal ends.

“People would like to have peace and stability and PiS delivers that,” he says. “From what I see, people are simply tired of politics.”