In Poland, a moderate cross-party coalition took over government in December from the homogeneous far-right Law and Justice Party and a small ally, creating a special situation – written by Aleks Szczerbiak, Notes from Polish Propaganda.
Of course, the party organization has a political program, through which they tried to find a common denominator between the political forces from the right and the left, which are very far from each other, but what they really agree on is holding their followers accountable. predecessor. In addition, to put it mildly, they will review the widespread elite exchange, which was carried out during PiS's eight-year rule.
A series of promises
The new government's first concern will be to keep the expensive social distribution promises it made in order to win the October elections. This is mainly because voters can already indicate their opinion of the work of the Prime Minister and his ministers in the municipal elections in April 2024 and then in the European Parliament elections in June.
The largest party in the coalition, the moderate right-wing Civic Platform, has proposed a 30% pay rise for teachers and a 20% increase for other public sector employees. In addition, an allowance of 1,500 zlotys (equivalent to 130,000 Hungarian forints at the current exchange rate) for those returning to work from unemployment. This is called “grandmother's pay,” referring to grandparents who are heavily involved in raising children.
The most expensive promise was to increase tax-free income to 60,000 zlotys (5.22 million forints) per year. This has been prevented for the time being because the tax changes in the approved 2024 budget can no longer be implemented. The most important social and political issue, abortion liberalization, is causing tension in the coalition. There is agreement that restrictions imposed under PiS rule will be eased, but not to what extent.
What is the opinion of the law?
They want to resolve the review of the country's previous leadership issues with parliamentary investigation committees, but the question is what will they achieve?
The end of the story could easily be that they took actions that violated the Constitution. This was the case, for example, with the acquittal of leaders who made state television a propaganda tool for the PiS government before the end of their term. Therefore, the time may quickly come when the former ruling party, which was forced to join the opposition, can accuse government officials of violating the rule of law. The most important message of the moderate right and left in the election campaign – apart from social division – was to restore the rule of law in Poland.
