Poland’s former agriculture minister, Jan Krzysztof Ardanowski, said during an interview yesterday that the party must face up to why it lost the election, and in particular singled out the advanced age of many of the top members of the Law and Justice (PiS) party.
“If we don’t face the truth, we will slide towards being a marginal sofa for geriatrics,” said the MP, who currently serves as an advisor to Polish President Andrzej Duda.
Ardanowski said he believes that during the second term in office (2019-2023), PiS became dominated by people who were self-satisfied and focused on their own comforts and benefits, with younger and idea-driven politicians marginalized.
The former minister argued that replicating the “total opposition” road adopted by the former opposition Civic Coalition will not improve PiS poll ratings.
“This is senseless, harmful and ineffective. It won’t help us regain power, and I cannot accept it,” he said.
He urged his party to accept that it lost power and to learn the lessons about what went wrong.
“We have to face up to what happened and learn the lessons, or else our poll ratings will continue to fall,” adding wryly that the “leadership seem to think they know best.”
This is not the first time Ardanowski has clashed with his party leadership. He left his job as minister for agriculture, as he did not agree with the decision taken by leader Jarosław Kaczyński to support radical animal welfare legislation that would have restricted livestock production and banned fur farming. The legislation was dropped as a result of an internal rebellion in the PiS parliamentary caucus.
Ardanowski was also critical of the PiS government’s handling of the issue of Ukrainian grain imports, having warned the party leadership that uncontrolled imports were likely to lead to protests by farmers. He also urged the government to publish a list of companies that were involved in the process of grain imports from Ukraine.
After last October’s election, in which PiS failed to obtain a majority in parliament, Ardanowski called for a change in party leadership, hinting that the current leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, needed to make way for younger leadership.
