/mlpol/ - My Little Politics

Poland’s government – led, since its autumn 2015 election victory, by the far-right Law and Justice (PiS) party – has come under heavy fire from its political opponents. The government has been accused of creeping authoritarianism and illiberalism, failing to respect the Polish Constitution and separation of powers, and undermining democracy and the rule of law in its approach to the judiciary, media, public appointments and civic rights. Thousands of Poles have participated in anti-government protests and the Law and Justice administration has faced harsh criticism from the EU political establishment and much of the Western opinion-forming media. The European Commission has launched a ‘rule of law’ action under Article 7 of the European treaties, threatening the Polish government with sanctions including possible suspension of the country’s voting rights in the European Council.
In spite of this wave of criticism, Law and Justice has maintained high levels of public support and during the last couple of months the party’s popularity has reached record levels.
Law and Justice (PiS) has a clear poll lead averaging 43% support (in the autumn 2015 election it secured 37.6%) compared with 23% for the centrist Civic Platform (PO), Poland’s ruling party between 2007 and 2015, 10% for the anti-establishment ‘Kukiz ‘15’ grouping, and 9% for the liberal ‘Modern’ (Nowoczesna) party. An October survey by the CBOS polling agency also found that that, at 44%, the number of government supporters was at its highest level since Law and Justice took office; 27% were opposed and 26% neutral.
Why is the ruling party so popular? Perhaps most importantly, the government has delivered on several of the high-profile social spending pledges that were the key to its 2015 election success. The most significant of these were its extremely popular flagship ‘500 plus’ child subsidy programme for the first children of poorer households and every second and subsequent child in all families, and a law reversing the previous government’s deeply unpopular pension reforms, which had increased the retirement age to 67 (from 60 for women and 65 for men).
The ‘500 plus’ programme in particular has had an important symbolic effect by providing a significant and clearly identifiable financial boost to many low income households who felt frustrated that they had not shared sufficiently in Poland’s recent economic growth. Many Poles feel that, while politicians have often promised to help the less well-off, Law and Justice is the first party to actually deliver on these pledges on such a scale.
The vast majority of Poles also support the Law and Justice government’s strong opposition to the EU’s mandatory re-distribution quotas for Middle Eastern and North African migrants located in Greece and Italy. For example, a May 2017 CBOS survey found that 70% of Poles were against accepting refugees (never mind economic migrants) from Muslim countries and only 25% were in favour. Law and Justice understands that for many Poles the European migration crisis is an issue of huge political and symbolic importance and – in stark contrast to the socially liberal, cosmopolitan consensus that predominates among West European cultural and political elites – they view the EU relocation scheme as a threat to national sovereignty, identity and security.
Moreover, although Poles are still overwhelmingly pro-EU, they are more divided over whether the Union’s institutions should become involved in the country’s internal affairs. Many are sympathetic to Law and Justice’s claim that the Commission’s criticisms of the Polish government are motivated, in part at least, by Warsaw’s rejection of enforced multi-culturalism and, more broadly, by what they see as a hegemonic EU liberal-left consensus in the moral-cultural sphere that undermines Poland’s traditional values and national identity. Interestingly, a June 2017 poll conducted by the IBRiS agency for the ‘Polityka’ journal found that 51% of respondents actually supported leaving the EU if this was the only way to prevent Poland from being forced to admit Muslim migrants.
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2017/10/26/explaining-the-popularity-of-polands-law-and-justice-government/
http://archive.is/UBm1b