State head: Amateur boxer against political professional: Poland elects president

Poland chooses a new president. The vote on a successor for the outgoing Andrzej Duda is also a decision about which Germany’s neighboring country will take in the future. Does the Liberal Pro -European Course of the Donald Tusk government get tailwind – or does a new rise right forces begin?

The incumbent President Duda, who comes from the ranks of national conservative PIS, is no longer allowed to compete in office after ten years. Twelve men and a woman apply for his successor. Two politicians are considered favorites.

Warsaw Mayor is ahead, according to surveys

The Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, who starts Liberal -Conservative Citizens’ coalition for Tusks, leads the surveys. In second place is the non -party historian Karol Nawrocki (42) supported by the PIS, previously head of the Institute for National Memory (IPN), the Polish counterpart of the former Stasi documents.

Slawomir Mentzen (38) has little chance of right -wing confederacja. Since none of the applicants in the first ballot will probably get the required absolute majority, a runoff election of the two candidates with the most votes in two weeks is likely.

Power struggle between Tusk and Kaczynski

The EU and NATO member Poland is under pressure. The war in Ukraine, the fear of Russian sabotage files, doubts about the support of the United States – that shapes the thoughts of many voters. But the presidential election is again a arm press of the two camps that have determined politics for 20 years: Tusk’s citizens’ coalition against the PiS of Jaroslaw Kaczynski. The Poles speak of the “duopol”.

The PIS, the name of which means “law and justice”, led Poland from 2015 to 2023. It put the judiciary to the Kandare, was therefore in constant dispute with Brussels and broke the relationship with Berlin with reparation claims at trillion height.

Tusk has been ruling the country with a center-left alliance since the end of 2023. He needs the victory of Trzaskowski so that he can undo the dismantling of democracy and the rule of law. So far, Duda has blocked many initiatives with his veto law. Tusk also stands for the integration of Poland in the EU. “It is symbolic that the new Chancellor Friedrich Merz went to Warsaw on his first trip abroad,” said sociologist Andrzej Rychard to the magazine “Polityka”.

TRZASKOWSKI waves the middle of the middle

The 53-year-old received his doctorate in social scientists Trzaskowski speaks five foreign languages, is liberal and pro-European. He wants to legalize abortions until the twelfth week of pregnancy, had the crucifixes hang out in Warsaw Office and marches with LGBT parades.

Trzaskowski belongs to the left wing in Tusk’s party. Finally, however, he has moved into the middle: for example, by pleading for a tough course against irregular migrants at the Belarus border and wants to restrict the social benefits for Ukrainian war refugees. Critics accuse him of having no clear positions.

PIS candidate with a difficult past

The PIS hopes for a return to power. If your candidate creates the move into the presidential palace, she would continue to have a key position to torpedo Tusk’s politics.

However, much indicates that the aging PIS boss Kaczynski did not have a happy hand when he conjured up the politically inexperienced Nawrocki. Kaczynski’s calculation is that Nawrocki should get voters from the right edge.

The Gdansk was an amateur boxer and bouncer as a young man – from this time he has good contacts in the red light milieu. He praises right -wing populists like the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban; He brought the right Romanian presidential candidate George Simion to an election campaign meeting. Nawrocki has already received an audience with US President Donald Trump. The White House posted pictures of the two with their thumbs up.

But finally the candidate caused negative headlines with the difficult past. Under dubious conditions, Nawrocki had an apartment overwritten by a pensioner – in return for the promise to take care of the old man. But journalists found the helpless 80-year-old in an urban nursing home. The city of Gdansk pays for his maintenance. That should not be well received by PIS voters. Because many of them belong to the older and poorer part of the population.