Poland’s new right-wing government has prioritised implementation of the expensive social spending pledges that were critical to its election victory. However, its determination to radically reform the Polish state has drawn accusations of authoritarianism from the opposition while the new prime minister has yet to stamp her authority on the administration. Aleks Szczerbiak assesses all of the main players in the new government

Szczerbiak, Aleks

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blogs.lse.ac.uk http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2015/11/30/how-will-polands-law-and-justice-party-govern/How will Poland’s Law and Justice party govern?Poland’s new right-wing government has prioritised implementation of the expensive social spendingpledges that were critical to its election victory. However, its determination to radically reform thePolish state has drawn accusations of authoritarianism from the opposition while the new primeminister has yet to stamp her authority on the administration. Aleks Szczerbiak assesses all of themain players in the new government.The October parliamentary election saw a stunning victory for the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS)party. It became the first political grouping in post-communist Poland to secure election togovernment with an outright parliamentary majority, winning 235 seats in the 460-member Sejm, the country’s morepowerful lower chamber. This month, the party’s deputy leader Beata Szydło was sworn in as the new prime ministerand her government received a parliamentary vote of confidence. In her inaugural address, Mrs Szydło devoted mostattention to socio-economic issues, promising to introduce programmes aimed at spurring investment and innovation.She also promised to increase social spending and quickly implement Law and Justice’s key election pledges,including: its flagship 500 złoties per child monthly subsidy for poorer households, and for second and subsequentchildren in all families; reversing the deeply unpopular increase in the retirement age to 67 (from 60 for women and 65for men) introduced by the previous government, led by the centrist Civic Platform (PO) party; increasing tax-freeincome thresholds to 8,000 złoties; raising the hourly minimum wage to 12 złoties; and introducing free medicines forover-75s.These policies were critical to the party’s election victory so it is vital that the new government is seen to beimplementing them as quickly as possible. However, they are also very costly: the monthly child subsidy programmealone is estimated at 15-16 billion złoties for 2016 and up to 21.5 billion in subsequent years. The new government,therefore, faces a significant fiscal challenge at a time when the Polish economy appears to be slowing down andstate of the public finances deteriorating. So, as well as allowing a small increase in the budget deficit, to fund thisadditional social spending the Szydło government is planning to introduce a series of revenue raising measures,including: more dividend receipts from state-owned companies; improved tax collection; and new taxes on banks andlarger retailers.Moreover, in a bid to re-assure markets and investors who are worried that the party’s expensive social promisescould wreck Poland’s public finances and damage the business environment, Mrs Szydło appointed a number offigures who are seen as fiscally prudent and pro-business to senior roles within the government. The most notable ofthese is Mateusz Morawiecki, the highly respected chief executive of Bank Zachodni WBK bank, Poland’s thirdlargest lender, who becomes deputy prime minister in charge of economic affairs. Mr Morawiecki will stand at thehead of a new development ministry set up with broad competencies to co-ordinate the government’s economicpolicy across a range of departments. In fact, the previous 2005-7 Law and Justice administration pursued fairlyorthodox, pro-market economic policies: lowering income and payroll taxes, pushing through a tax relief package forfamilies, and bearing down on the budget deficit and public debt. However, when Law and Justice was elected in2005 its main priority was its ‘Fourth Republic’ programme of moral and political renewal of the Polish state, alongsidea rather vague pledge to build a ‘solidaristic’ Poland in contrast to Civic Platform’s economic liberalism. This time theparty’s electoral appeal was based more on ‘bread-and-butter’ socio-economic issues with very specific socialspending pledges playing a prominent role in the campaign, so it will be under a lot of pressure to deliver on these.Controversial appointmentsMrs Szydło’s new cabinet also includes several controversial appointees who served in the previous Law and Justice-led government. The defence ministry will be headed by the hawkish party deputy leader Antoni Macierewicz, aLaw and Justice’s deputy party leader and newly-appointed Defence Minister,Antoni Macierewicz. Credit: Silar / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)decision that contradicts Mrs Szydło’s statement during the election campaign when, to distract media attention fromcontroversial remarks made by Mr Macierewicz to Polish diaspora in Chicago, she said that she was ‘likely’ to appointthe more emollient Jarosław Gowin to this post. Law and Justice feels that it needs someone more experienced in thedefence ministry at a time when Poland is spendinglarge sums on contracts to modernise its militaryassets.Mr Macierewicz, who was deputy defence minister inthe previous Law and Justice government, has built upa powerful position within the party in recent years byheading up a commission investigating the causes ofthe April 2010 Smolensk tragedy in which the then Lawand Justice-backed President Lech Kaczyński, twinbrother of party leader Jarosław Kaczyński, anddozens of other senior officials died in a plane crash inWestern Russia. However, Mr Macierewicz’scommission has caused controversy by appearing tocountenance Russian sabotage as a possible cause ofthe tragedy. Although increasing numbers of Poleshave questioned the official version of events – whichblames poor planning, pilot error and mistakes byRussian air traffic controllers in difficult weatherconditions – most continue to reject the idea that the crash was orchestrated by Moscow. For his part, Mr Gowin –who is leader of the small, liberal-conservative Poland Together (PR) party, one of Law and Justice’s electoral allies –became higher education and science minister and one of the prime minister’s three deputies.The new justice minister is Zbigniew Ziobro, who returns to the post that he held in the 2005-7 government. Mr Ziobrowas, at one time, a Law and Justice deputy leader but was expelled from the party in 2011 when he clashed with MrKaczyński over its future direction. However, he made his way back into office by heading up the small right-wingSolidaristic Poland (SP) party; another Law and Justice electoral ally which, along with Poland Together, MrKaczyński’s party needs to maintain the government’s parliamentary majority. Although critics argue that Mr Ziobro’seagerness to pursue high profile criminal cases meant that he engaged in politicised prosecutions that by-passedproper procedures, his supporters defend him as a fearless exponent of that government’s law-and-order and anti-corruption crackdown.The new security service co-ordinator is Mariusz Kamiński, another controversial figure who, in a non-binding verdictwhich he appealed, was sentenced by a Warsaw court in March to three years imprisonment and a ten-year ban onholding public office. Mr Kamiński was accused of abusing his powers while head of the elite central anti-corruptionbureau (CBA), which he ran from 2007-9, during the investigation of the so-called ‘land affair’ in the agricultureministry. According to the court, Mr Kamiński, along with three other bureau officials, initiated an operation thatinvolved forging documents and ‘phone tapping in spite of the fact that there was no reliable information oninfringements to the law. His supporters argue that the judgement was politically motivated and followed severalearlier court rulings that the bureau’s action was lawful. Indeed, in a controversial move Law and Justice-backedPresident Andrzej Duda pardoned Mr Kamiński immediately before the new minister took office.Reconstructing the Polish stateCritics argue that these appointments contradict the moderate, centrist image that Law and Justice cultivated duringthe election campaign; exemplified by the decision to nominate Mrs Szydło, rather than the more combative MrKaczynski, as the party’s prime ministerial nominee. However, they also suggest that the party is committed to theradical reconstruction of the Polish state and, although it did not give a very high profile to this issue during theelection, this remains at the core of Law and Justice’s programme and ideology. The party continues to believe thatmany Polish state institutions have been expropriated by an extremely well entrenched, and often deeply corrupt,post-communist elite and that the new government needs to have hawkish and determined individuals in charge ofthese key ministries in order to cleanse the political system.These appointments, together with a series of decisive early government actions in this sphere, have already led tocharges from the party’s political opponents and the liberal-left media that it is repeating the allegedly confrontationaland authoritarian style of politics that they argue characterised the previous Law and Justice administration. Forexample, the government was criticised for replacing the four heads of the civilian and military intelligence services,and forcing the resignation of the anti-corruption bureau chief (after an investigation was launched into his securitycertificate), all of whom were appointed by the previous Civic Platform-led administration. It also scrapped the six-month rotational chairmanship of parliamentary security services commission which gave the opposition anopportunity to scrutinise their conduct more effectively. Law and Justice argued that: changes at the top of the securityservices were common when a new administration took office; an urgent re-structuring was necessary as theirfunctioning was distorted by pathologies; and Civic Platform had also prevented the opposition chairing the securityservices commission in the previous parliament.However, the greatest controversy surrounded the Law and Justice-dominated parliament’s decision to annul theappointment of five judges nominated by the previous Civic Platform government to Poland’s 15-memberconstitutional tribunal, a powerful body that rules on the constitutionality of laws. The move met with widespreadcriticism from both opposition parties and elements of the Polish legal establishment, who accused the government ofviolating the constitutional division of powers by interfering in the independence of the judiciary. The tribunal’s critics,however, see it as a highly politicised body that struck down key elements of the previous Law and Justice-ledgovernment’s legislative programme. Mr Kaczyński’s party also argues that Civic Platform provoked the situationbecause two of five outgoing judges’ terms of office were not due to expire until December but the then ruling partystill forced through their replacement in October, just before it was due to lose power, in order to complicate the newgovernment’s work.How secure is Mrs Szydło?Implementing a programme of radical reconstruction of the Polish state was always going to bring the newgovernment into conflict with the post-communist establishment. Nonetheless, Law and Justice has a number ofpolitical assets that should help ensure its stability and longevity. Together with an unprecedented single-partyparliamentary majority, it also enjoys the support of the 41-member ‘Kukiz ’15’ parliamentary caucus on someconstitutional issues. This is an ideologically eclectic and unstable ‘anti-system’ right-wing grouping clustered aroundthe charismatic rock star and social activist Pawel Kukiz, some of whose deputies may even end up defecting to theruling party. The government’s position is also buttressed by the strong backing of President Duda who has alreadyshown that he will facilitate rather than obstruct the government’s programme. Moreover, Civic Platform, now the mainopposition grouping, is severely weakened and faces a protracted period of soul-searching and internal divisions as itis engulfed in a party leadership election.However, some commentators have raised concerns that competing power centres could emerge in the primeminister and Mr Kaczyński’s offices with the Law and Justice leader trying to steer Mrs Szydło from behind-the-scenes. Indeed, there was speculation, fuelled by the party’s rather chaotic public relations in the post-electionperiod, that the government was being chosen for her by Mr Kaczyński and better-placed party insiders. Mrs Szydłois certainly surrounded by powerful ministers whom she had only a limited say in choosing. Although having a directelectoral mandate should put her in a strong position, analogies have been drawn with the situation following the2005 election when Mr Kaczyński, whose brother was elected President at the same time, appointed a second-rankpolitician, Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, as prime minister to avoid the controversy of twins filling Poland’s two higheststate offices, only to replace him a few months later. We will soon find out if Mrs Szydło can stamp her authority onthe new administration or, as many commentators have predicted, proves to be a weak prime minister who will bepushed aside quickly if the government starts to encounter serious difficulties.Please read our comments policy before commenting .Note: A version of this article appears at Aleks Szczerbiak’s personal blog. The article gives the views of the author,and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/21opHdf _________________________________About the authorAleks Szczerbiak – University of SussexAleks Szczerbiak is Professor of Politics and Contemporary European Studies at the University ofSussex. He is author of Poland Within the European Union? New Awkward Partner or New Heart ofEurope? (Routledge, 2012) and blogs regularly about developments on the Polish political scene athttp://polishpoliticsblog.wordpress.com/

How will Poland’s Law and Justice party govern?

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