New leader wants to ‘clean up’ Poland. Does public trust him to do so?

When Donald Tusk formed a centrist coalition government in December to govern Poland, he finally received a chance to realize his campaign promise to “clean up” the country “with an iron broom.”

The previous right-wing government had turned inward and rolled back women’s and minority rights over the previous eight years. Now, he declared, Poland would strengthen relations with the European Union, reinstate abortion rights, and generally fix what he called the democratic backsliding of his populist predecessors.

But, like the 2020 presidential election in the United States, Poland’s parliamentary elections last year left the country still bitterly divided. The ousted Law and Justice party still has loyalists throughout the Polish judiciary and media, and retains the support of millions of Poles – more than any other party (though not a majority, and it lacked allies to form a coalition).

And the sweeping changes that Mr. Tusk wants to make – including, so far, the dissolution and reincorporation of state media and attempted dismissal of the national prosecutor – have already been branded as “undemocratic” by Law and Justice.

How does one “restore democracy” in such a polarized environment?

As democrats around the world struggle with governments flirting with authoritarianism, Poland’s way forward will be watched closely. Ultimately, say sociologists, the new government needs to restore the trust that people have in government – and in each other. It’s a tall order for a country that ranks second lowest in the European Union for public trust in government, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

“Politically the most important thing right now is to close this gap between [opposing parties], because more and more we have an existential threat within the next few years between us,” says Jakub Wygnański, sociologist and co-founder of the Shipyard Foundation. “You need virtues; you need trust – that’s the basic glue of the democratic system, especially in insecure times.”

The pressure to change quickly

Under parties of all stripes, Poland has seen a systematic weakening of institutional arbiters – such as the prosecutor’s office, the judiciary, and the media – over its 35-year history as a young democracy. That accelerated under Law and Justice, which effectively “colonized” those arbiters with party loyalists, says Klaus Bachmann, a historian at SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw.

Prime Minister Tusk can try to “clean up,” but the opposition still holds the president’s office, which will likely veto any changes he might make legally.

The pressure’s on, because the coalition’s supporters want results. “I don’t want things to be rushed, but I would like to see some achievements and outcomes by the end of the year,” says Jolanta Nowak, an economist who voted for Mr. Tusk’s party. “I would be satisfied with this.”

Mr. Tusk could wait and hope the next presidential election, in spring 2025, installs one of his comrades, thus neutralizing the veto. But the pressure may also tempt him to skirt rules in the same vein of his predecessors. For example, his government dissolved public media as the quickest way to resolve a leadership dispute and sweep out journalists installed by Law and Justice. Mr. Tusk’s government declared the moves by the book, but Law and Justice politicians called them a “violation of the constitution.”

“Tusk has the support of his people. Their opinion polls are good. If he wanted to do these things, he could just do them now. The danger is the long run,” says Dr. Bachmann. “This is the fundamental question.”

Specifically, he says, it’s the possibility that Mr. Tusk perpetuates a cycle of political retribution, further eroding democratic norms.

In the past, if politicians are voted out, they land back in a small-town mayoralty, go to a think tank, or take a job at a state-owned enterprise, explains Dr. Bachmann. But flout the law while you’re in office and then lose the next election, and you could face a parliamentary committee or investigation by a prosecutor.

“Now they risk prison. And then the next government also risks prison. And you have such a situation that becomes basically the end of any orderly, peaceful transition of power,” says Dr. Bachmann. “Politics is about getting power and keeping power, right? You try to hold on to power to avoid that situation – and that’s basically the end of democracy.”

Every election, a revolution?

Both the previous government and the new one have raised hackles in their exercise of the law, depending on who’s doing the judging.

According to a Warsaw Enterprise Institute report, the use of pretrial detentions doubled between 2015 and 2021 under Law and Justice rule – a situation that increasingly drew the scrutiny of human rights organizations. And Law and Justice also packed the Constitutional Court, Poland’s highest bench, to try to overcome the obstacles it posed to the government’s agenda.

For its part, the new coalition government has dissolved state media and also enforced a court verdict to imprison two former Law and Justice ministers, amid a heated political row and public demonstrations. (The ministers were eventually pardoned by the president in January.)

Legality aside, such moves feel tit for tat, so that each change of government might feel like a revolution.

Poland’s new Ministry of Justice proclaims everything will be done by the book as it works to rebuild trust in the country’s institutions, says Arkadiusz Myrcha, the deputy justice minister.

“It’s primarily about [instilling a feeling of] equality for everyone in terms of subject, individual, and state,” says Mr. Myrcha. “That we all operate and live by the same rules, that someone who commits an offense, whether an average Kowalski – ‘average Joe’ in Polish – or a politician, is equally accountable.”

But Law and Justice politicians say that the new government is behaving illegally.

“When they came into power, they immediately started to take over the media without legal basis,” says Paweł Jabłoński, a Law and Justice member of parliament. “We’ve been accused of breaching the rules of democracy, the rule of law, the separation of powers. ... We never did that. We failed to secure a majority [in October’s election] and we left. We left the government.”

Just this week, Mr. Tusk’s coalition announced it would remove some judges installed by Law and Justice to the Constitutional Court. It’s a controversial move, though opinion polls show Mr. Tusk gaining 5 percentage points in public trust while top Law and Justice leaders dropped, according to public pollster CBOS.

Meanwhile, an ideological gap continues to widen between the new government and now-opposition Law and Justice, despite Mr. Tusk’s rhetoric about “reconciliation and reconstruction of the national community.”

If reconciliation is the goal, Mr. Tusk has a long way to go.

For Jan Bonikowski, a pensioner who supported Law and Justice in October’s elections, it’s Mr. Tusk’s coalition that has “finished democracy.” Mr. Bonikowski says he’s so disgusted by politics that he doesn’t watch television anymore.

On the other side are voters such as Ewa Mańkiewicz, a retired accountant, who is happy the coalition won in October. She longs for a time when people on opposite sides of the political spectrum were kinder to each other.

“Over the last eight years, people stopped talking to each other. Even back in the communist era, people of opposing political views would still be able to have a conversation, but that’s changed immensely.”

Piotr Żakowiecki contributed to this report.