Tusk is creating a cordon sanitaire around Law and Justice party, with Confederation’s aid

The leader of Poland's opposition alliance, Donald Tusk, attends the first session of the lower house, or Sejm, of the newly elected parliament in Warsaw, Poland, on Monday, Nov. 13, 2023. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)
By Grzegorz Adamczyk
3 Min Read

The election sabotage of Law and Justice (PiS) candidates for the vice-speaker positions of both the Sejm and the Senate signifies the commencement of a plan orchestrated by Donald Tusk.

This strategy aims solely to isolate PiS in the political arena and to create a sanitary cordon around it, through which attempts will be made to neutralize the influence of a Polish party supported by the largest voter base.

For this sole reason, Elżbieta Witek and Marek Pęk were not elected as vice-speakers of the Polish parliament’s houses.

Lawyer Wojciech Sadurski, a leading ideologue of the opposition, had clearly written about such a plan days before the first session of the Sejm, urging votes against Witek. The opposition’s goal is not to make PiS “illegal” but to “delegitimize” it, to treat it as a leprous patient and thrust it into harsh isolation. This was essentially the thesis of the lawyer, who is unfortunately taken seriously by many in the Civic Platform (PO).

This mentality is deeply anti-democratic. A mindset that deems anything outside its ideology and interests as a “plague” on society, as Sadurski explained, to be exterminated by all available means.

Now the Confederation, and its most important politician (if not the only serious one), Krzysztof Bosak, is participating in this anti-democratic campaign. It’s not just that half of his club voted against Witek. It’s not even that Grzegorz Braun, probably the biggest pest in the history of Polish conservatism, used his first appearance in the new Sejm to launch a primitive attack on Witek.

It’s about his club supporting a candidate for the Speaker of the Sejm from a camp that will promote precisely this tyranny against PiS and its supporters.

It’s also about Bosak later speaking about the entire situation, discussing PiS in the same discriminatory tone as representatives of the “total coalition.” According to him, PiS put forward an “unelectable candidate,” and the party should “cleanse and rehabilitate itself.” This is rhetoric that guarantees him prime time in media outlets close to Tusk.

A group portrayed as “anti-systemic,” as one that “flips tables,” suddenly turned out to be deeply conformist and ready to take its place in the emerging totalitarian system before our eyes.

Journalist Krzysztof Karnkowski puts it aptly: “The Confederation with a vice-speaker, PiS without. Let’s learn what true anti-systematism is.”

Just a few months ago, the Confederation looked like a political force that could change the balance of power on the right. Within just a few months, the party is now helping Donald Tusk in his mission to destroy Polish sovereignty. It’s sad.

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