Poland re-elects PM Donald Tusk

[Jimbuna]

Prime Minister Donald Tusk has become the first Polish leader to be re-elected since the end of communism.
Officials results, announced after 93% of votes had been counted, gave Mr Tusk's Civic Platform party enough seats to continue in coalition.
The centre-right Civic Platform took 39% of the vote, against 30% for its conservative challenger, the Law and Justice Party.
The leader of Law and Justice, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, has admitted defeat.
Civic Platform becomes the first Polish party to win two consecutive terms since communism's fall in 1989.
Mr Tusk, 54, appears to have been rewarded for presiding over four years of strong economic growth, since winning a snap election in 2007.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15230750

[Tchocky]

Dissatisfied with the result, General Election is marshalling his forces and preparing for a march on Warsaw!

I'll keep this going a while, I think

[STEED]

Are the Polish going home now to a better country?

Poland economy good, UK economy bad.

[Herr-Berbunch]

Vendor away again?

[nikimcbee]

Curious where all the Poles are here, I'd love to hear their opinion.

[Torplexed]

Actually all we care is whether Katarzyna Lenart won. The 23 year old candidate who's ad consisted of a striptease. Here one Pole who should do well at the polls.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/1..._n_998696.html

[nikimcbee]

Originally Posted by Torplexed

Actually all we care is whether Katarzyna Lenart won. The 23 year old candidate who's ad consisted of a striptease. Here one Pole who should do well at the polls.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/1..._n_998696.html

Vote yes for boobies.

[Jimbuna]

Didn't look very 'political' to me

[kranz]

ok, how I see this:
no matter who would you ask, you would hear that Donald Tusk is a master of PR. Thanks to him, his party, won both elections, in 2007 and 2011. 3 weeks before the day of elections, PO (his party) launched a campaign that was based on a distinction: polite and calm Donald Tusk(PO) vs brutal and vicious Jaroslaw Kaczynski (PiS, borther of the later president Lech Kaczynski who died in Smolensk).
Reason for this strategy was simple: the government of PO (plus the coalition party which has nothing to do here because they had only 2-3 ministers) had relatively bad social assessment. Smth like 55% unhappy of their work and the general situation in Poland, 20% happy, and the rest couldn't decide. However, Donald Tusk has been always the leader of all "trust opinion polls". His score was always around 60-70%, with a negative of 10-15%. He never scolded any journalist, he was always smiling, saying funny anecdotes, jokes, w/e. He has always been making a good impression, even if he was attacked by some unhappy citizen he could always find an explanation etc. Media and his advisors created an image of a good father, husband, and Prime minister. On the other hand we had the bad guy, that is Jaroslaw Kaczynski. Hated by media, has always had a bad PR. A serious face during press conferences, scolding journalists, using metaphors and words that common people couldn't understand. Kaczynski doesn't have a bank account, a driving license, he is a bachelor. (often ridiculed for being a crypto-gay or a zoophile as he owns a cat) Kaczynski also became a synonym of a past which has an influence on the presence. And here we reach the main difference between Tusk and Kaczynski, PO and PiS.
A short historical note: all democratic movements in Poland had their starting point in th so-called "Solidarnosc" which you may have heard of. (with Lech Walesa as its leader). Solidarnosc was the root for both Tusk and Kaczynski.
In 1989, after Solidarnosc won the elections,(actually it was in the early 1990 where the crucial events happened). There was a large crack in Solidarnosc and a major problem appeared(this problem is the core of current division in Polish society, political parties etc). What to do with the communist elites who ruled so far? There were two solutions: adopt them into political parties and allow them to stay in political life or deprive them of this right, create regulations which would exclude them from politics, and what is more, forbid them to be clerks, policemen etc. During the communist regime there was a function of so-called "hidden-collaborator". That was not a typical agent of the secret police but someone who was on their payroll and served a as source of information. What kind of information? Any that would be helpful for the secret police. Examples: if you were a student or a journalist you could get a passport to leave wherever you wanted but you had to provide some details about your friends who was seen with people from Solidarnosc(ofc this is only an example and oversimplification of the problem, but may give you some idea of the service of these "hidden-collaborators". in general, their task was to collect data which later could be helpful for the secret police (in Polish called UB,and later SB). Of course Solidarnosc itself was also infiltrated by the secret police and hidden-agents. Some most popular names are Lech Walesa(Polish president) and Tadeusz Mazowiecki (first freely chosen Prime Minister). Mazowiecki was also the creator of the metaphor of a "thick line". He is very often attributed to the "policy of the thick line". I assume you know what it means, in a nutshell-cooperation with post-communist. And here lies the roots of Donald Tusk and one branch of the Solidarnosc movement. Solidarnosc disappears as a political party. Most of their members go with Walesa and Mazowiecki along with "pink" supporters (pink as a derivative of red). The rest goes with Kaczynski brothers claiming that "The Round Table" of 1989 (a series of meetings between communists and people from Solidarnosc, held in order to transfer the "ruling power" (sorry, couldn't find a better phrase) from one hands to another) was actually a betray of values of Solidarnosc, because communists were allowed to keep some of their posts.
So basically, these two tendencies continued during the 1990's, were decreased to minimum up to 2005 when a new elections were held. (SLD, the party of post-communist, and the party of that lady posted above, completely lost because they simply ruined the country and that allowed for that tendency to perceive presence as a result of past decisions, to be revoked.)In 2005, PiS(Kaczynski) won the elections but his strategy of tracking every "hidden-agent" everywhere (especially in media...check the "PR part" of my post)soon lead him to a lose in 2007(elections are held every 4 years but there were some special circumstances in 2007). Tusk threated the Poles using Kaczynski as a toy pistol-everything that reminded of the 2005-2007 period was regarded as extremely bad, smth like this "Hoover's hunting" in the USA. So, in 2011, Tusk repeated that strategy of not showing the clash between PO and PiS (as the parties) but as a personal clash between him and evil Kaczynski. Evil, in a sense that I'll explain lower.
That is the "world view" difference between Tusk and Kaczynski. I've written this wall of text to show you at least a bit of reality in which these two leaders originated because, and this may be hard to grasp for some people, our Polish mentality(or it;s not even Polish, I guess it could be attributed to nations which have undergone similar transformations).
Now, a few up-to-date facts:
there is a general consensus in Polish media (I mean experts, sociologists, politologists (yeah, I know, this word does not exist...)that the period 2007-2011 was a period of stabilization and stagnation. Tusk refused to carry on with any already started(or not) reform which would decrease his "opinion polls' rates". Examples:
-health-care: the majority of Polish hospitals has large debts. The fund(place where our insurance money are paid to)pays every hospital for certain services. However, if you are not insured, the hospital cannot (I know, for people living in the USA this must be unbelievable) refuse to perform certain service (surgery, physician counsel etc). So the hospital is not being paid for what it does. That is one problem. The second is that Tusk has figured out that some of the services should no longer be paid by the fund (example: there are two ways of cutting out appendicitis: cutting you from top to bottom or just doing a laparoscopic surgery with a 2 cm cut. he decided that the former would be "free" and the later would require and extra fee.) After 4 years he hasn't done anything to introduce this reform. The reduced list of medical services still remains only in his "pre-election" billboards and leaflets.
-cutting expenditures: Tusk decided to cut equally on everyone. He increased VAT, made a second university faculty a non-free one, decreased several welfare benefits what in most cases strikes in the poorest (tax reduction per child, "funeral benefit", communication concession for students, etc) PiS wanted to charge only banks, not even changing the structure of the income taxes. The analysts claim that the policy of stabilization served well for the first wave of crisis but will have terrible consequences in 2-3 years when we will be hit by another wave. The fact that money were not invested in creating new jobs will take its toll soon. Tusk always claimed that it was his government who saved us from falling into deep crisis. However, the economists agree that it was Poles who kept buying goods and powered our economy. On the other hand, when it comes to prices, Tusk claims that in market-driven economy the government cannot do anything bcoz of demand-supply rules of economy. But when in 2006 the price of gas slightly increased, Tusk said: "When Kaczynski decides, the gas costs 5 zlotys"=1,2 Euro). Now it costs almost 6 zlotys (1,5 Euro) and "he is cannot be blamed for that".
-promises: before the elections in 2007, Tusk promised to finish the construction of several highway lines, connecting east with west (the most important line bcoz of Euro 2012)and north-south lines. However, in 2009-2010 many of these "highways" disappeared from his plans and were turn into "high-speed roads" because he couldn;t find enough money in a budget he made. The most important promise was to decrease the amount of "surveillance" of citizens left by PiS. The problem is that the numbers show something exactly the opposite. The number of telephone lines under surveillance increased, the number of people put into a 3-month custody (when they don't know if you are guilty or not, they put you for 3 months)increased, new legal regulations concerning the freedom of speech were introduced (you cannot bring a banner criticizing the government into football games any more). People criticizing the government are harassed, deprived of jobs and students thrown out of universities.
-foreign policy: Kaczynski's idea was to hold a firm position among EU partners to get a better offer (very often by blocking some negotiations etc, especially against Russia)whereas Tusk agrees on most retarded EU ideas given him by Merkel(e.g.the Euro+ idea).Same goes with Russia. We signed gas contracts for 20 years even though we could have much cheaper gas from Norway or Germany.
Next years (I won't write 4 bcoz in that pace we will starve out much earlier)
will be continuation of his previous strategy.

[Osmium Steele]

Originally Posted by kranz

(I know, for people living in the USA this must be unbelievable)

Not at all. The same applies at any US hospital which accepts government paid insurance. Medicare, Medicaid, etc. with the same predictable cost increases.

Thank you for a VERY interesting read.