Circumstances are dire in Poland under the rule of the conservative Law & Justice (PiS) party, if you’re to believe recent media coverage.
In the Los Angeles Times, journalist and author Kati Marton warns, “When Poles go to vote this fall, democracy itself will be on the line.” (READ MORE by Michael O’Shea: Chaos Ensues as Poland Vote Looms)
Anne Applebaum, author, journalist, and wife of a scandal-ridden former Polish defense minister in the opposition camp, asserts in the Atlantic, “[State capture] has been under way for eight years,” and “This campaign is neither free nor fair.”
In Politico Europe, Jan Cieński offers this unhinged assessment:
PiS has done a lot of damage over the last eight years, and it’s difficult to see how much more it can do while still remaining a member of the EU. The state media is a Euro-lite version of North Korea, state-controlled corporations are stuffed with party hacks, the highest courts are firmly under political control, much of the Roman Catholic Church functions as a PiS acolyte, the police don’t mind clubbing the occasional opposition protester, the prosecutor’s office has become a political plaything — dropping investigations of the well-connected while fiercely pursuing the regime’s opponents.
Of these, only Applebaum offers a coherent, fact-based argument for her dystopian account. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter much. Establishment media have muscled into the consciousness of the average Westerner the idea that Poland is an autocratic state. Foreign leaders and EU officials have been eager to join the fray.
The Kangaroo Courts in Poland’s Future
Having established this rhetorical foundation, opposition forces are preparing to enact a cartoonish version of the purported excesses they describe. When your opponents are characterized as “a Euro-lite version of North Korea,” everything is fair game.
On its campaign website, the principal opposition party Civic Coalition (KO), led by former prime minister and President of the European Council Donald Tusk, has published a list of campaign promises that include kangaroo-court trials of PiS-affiliated opponents. (READ MORE: Meet the Polish Family Martyred by the Nazis)
“Violations of the Constitution and the rule of law will be quickly accounted for and judged,” reads one platform promise. It outlines a plan to bring before a state tribunal figures, including President Andrzej Duda, over refusing to hear the oaths of controversial judges and exercising his presidential pardon for four individuals, and Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, for “instructing the Polish Postal Service to conduct illegal mail-in elections” during the 2020 presidential contest. The latter accusation, ironically, mirrors an American Democratic Party election tactic from that same year.
Other figures slated for the tribunal are the Minister of Justice, a former Deputy Prime Minister, the Chairman of the National Broadcasting Council, the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, and the President of the National Bank of Poland, the latter for allegedly not combating inflation.
KO is also promising to “submit applications to an independent, depoliticized prosecution” to try PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński “for masterminding and attempting to change the political system of the state.” Other figures on this list include the Minister of Digital Affairs, a former Minister of Internal Affairs, and a former Minister of Health. Also slated for prosecution are unspecified “trolls who used information obtained from the Ministry of Justice to slander independent judges.”
A Familiar Media Landscape
These plans aren’t the exclusive domain of Polish-speaking political observers. Opposition mouthpieces have voiced them openly. Cieński, for example, speculates whether President Duda (not up for reelection this year) would “play ball” with a potential KO-led government. “[T]here is a chance that Duda will cooperate, as Tusk has threatened to prosecute him for violating the constitution.” Briefly imagine if the roles were reversed.
Banana-republic show trials aren’t the only societal changes on offer from the opposition platform. Those concerned with Poland’s well-being should be particularly alarmed at the opposition’s plans for the country’s media landscape. The establishment’s dystopian accounts focus very heavily on this topic, and its plans for a post-PiS media environment are not difficult to imagine.
The former Warsaw Pact region’s transition to free media is complex and multifaceted; a reality establishment voices are happy to exploit. Boris Kálnoky, a journalist and journalism school instructor who has built a career in both German and Hungarian journalism, superbly outlines Hungary’s post-communist media history. While the specific players aren’t relevant to Poland, the interactions among media, government, and foreign stakeholders are very similar.
If Kálnoky were to publish a comparable overview of the Polish landscape, he would detail an environment in which the anti-PiS Left not only has a voice but arguably commands the most prominent sources of information.
While Swiss-German-owned leading tabloid Fakt has no defined political bent, Gazeta Wyborcza, the country’s largest traditional news publication, approaches news from a leftist perspective and might be reasonably compared to the New York Times. A widely circulated headline this year read, “Catholic Fundamentalists Have Killed Another Woman.” Rzeczpospolita, Wyborcza’s most prominent competitor, applies an economic focus, traditionally from a center-right perspective, and might be reasonably compared to the Wall Street Journal. An investment fund owned by George Soros purchased the paper this year. (READ MORE: Poles Vote on Immigration While Other Europeans Suffer)
Within broadcast media, Warner Bros.-owned TVN is a popular left-wing alternative to government-run TVP. The former’s Fakty news program, unfailingly critical of the government, is the most-watched in Poland. Polsat completes the big three lineup for those wary of TVN and TVP.
“Overnight, you will get the public media back,” asserted Tusk recently. “Everyone will be booted out of there.” Such a move would be par for the course after regime change in Europe. What isn’t normal is the assertion that government-friendly public news represents “state capture.”
Having read these accounts, a new visitor to Poland might be shocked by how the media landscape compares to those in the United States and Western Europe. This summer, Polish bookshops prominently displayed Dariusz Joński and Michał Szczerba’s Wielkie zniwa: Jak PiS ukradł Polskę (The Great Harvest: How PiS Stole Poland). Newsweek Polska emblazoned its covers with a rainbow-flag design. Lampoons of PiS figureheads abounded. Opposition sympathizers have had no shortage of political and journalistic expression.
Thus, Applebaum, Cieński, Marton, and Co. aren’t really aggrieved over concepts like “state capture” or “free and fair” elections. They’re incensed that the national-minded Poles, Catholics, and globalism-skeptics who have twice elected PiS have a societal voice at all. Cieński touched on something profound when he dismissively stated Poland “is no [recent-election-holding] Slovakia.” That a country of Poland’s size and influence has pursued a nationalist tack thoroughly rankles elite sensibilities.
This weekend’s election figures to be very close. It isn’t certain that either bloc will be able to form a government. But Tusk and his allies will eventually return to power. When they do, Poles can expect to see a societal fury unleashed.
Michael O’Shea, a dual citizen of the United States and Poland, is a visiting fellow at the Danube Institute. He is an alumnus of the Budapest Fellowship Program, sponsored by the Hungary Foundation and the Mathias Corvinus Collegium. Follow him on X (Twitter) @Michael_F_OShea.