Dyrina Anna Fedorovna – Researcher, INION
The article analyzes the political success of the currently ruling party of Poland «Law and Justice» («Prawo i Sprawiedliwość», PiS): the results of the presidential elections in 2015 and 2020; factors that influenced PiS’s victory, including the parliamentary elections of 2015 and 2019; some trends in domestic and foreign policy of PiS. The history of the party, which arose in 2001 with the aim of consolidating the right-wing forces, is briefly described, its main goals and guidelines are indicated. «Law and Justice» has been the most popular party in Poland for almost a decade. What is the reason for such success? This issue is quite relevant, since Poland, being a major political player in Eastern Europe, as well as a member of the EU and NATO, has the ability to influence foreign policy situation and security not only in the East European region, but also beyond. In 2015, «Law and Justice» took a leading position on the Polish political scene: its candidate A. Duda won the presidential elections in the second round, PiS won 37.6% of the votes in the parliamentary elections, receiving 235 seats in the Sejm (lower house of the Polish parliament) out of 460. After the victory in the elections of 2015, the PiS presented a radical reform program. In the parliamentary elections of 2019, the right-wing coalition led by «Law and Justice» won the elections, receiving 235 seats in the Polish Sejm. The results of the elections to the European Parliament on May 25, 2014 and May 25, 2019 confirmed the results of the national vote in both the presidential and parliamentary elections. The article notes that for the past seven years, Warsaw has been in conflict with Brussels because of the attempts of the Polish government to put the country’s judicial system under tighter political control. On June 12, 2020, A. Duda again won in the second round of the presidential elections, with 51.03% of the vote. The article discusses the peculiarities of holding these elections, which were originally supposed to be held on May 10 in the new format of voting by mail, adopted due to the COVID-19 pandemic; however, this proved difficult to implement and the election date was postponed. In conclusion, the factors that contributed to the popularity of PiS, as well as the activities of the party that caused discontent in Polish society, are identified.
Poland, «Law and Justice», «Civic Platform», presidential elections, parliamentary elections, L. Kaczyński, J. Kaczyński, A. Duda, B. Komorowski, R. Trzaskowski.
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