Polish president praises record election turnout as proof of a stable democracy

Poland’s president Andrzej Duda has praised Sunday’s election, in which his allies in the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) lost their majority, as proof his country is a “stable democracy”.

Preliminary results on Monday, with 75 per cent of the vote counted, showed PiS first place with 37 per cent and 196 seats in the 260-seat project, 35 seats short of an absolute majority and with no apparent coalition options.

Mr Duda praised the “gigantic” turnout of 73 per cent, a record 20 million votes, and said he would wait until the official results on Tuesday to act.

[ Donald Tusk claims victory in Poland after polls predict change of administration ]

“Every election is a kind of test of how much of a democratic society we are, how mature a society we are, how much we are a society that has come of age,” Mr Duda said.

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Mr Duda, who was a PiS candidate in the presidential election, did not indicate if he would ask the party to try form a government first or approach the opposition directly.

Asking the first-placed party to form a government is more of a tradition than a constitutional obligation in Poland. After two turbulent terms in opposition, several Polish parties said on Monday they would not even consider negotiating with PiS.

As the count continued on Monday, all eyes were on Donald Tusk. The 66-year-old veteran of domestic and European politics claimed victory on Sunday night for his Civic Coalition (KO), which took 29 per cent of the vote in Monday’s updated count numbers.

Though second-placed, KO support from two partners – the Third Way and New Left, with 14 and 8 per cent respectively on Monday – would give a Tusk-led coalition 249 seats, 18 more than an absolute majority in the lower house of parliament, the Sejm.

Tuesday’s final result – including full votes from big cities and the foreign vote – is expected to see a further swing in support toward the Tusk-led opposition. With half the foreign vote counted, Mr Tusk’s KO took twice as many votes as PiS.

There was a similar picture in elections for the upper house, the senate, with PiS leading but the three-way opposition coalition 19 seats ahead.

Prof Jaroslaw Flis, political scientist at Krakow’s Jagiellonian University, said that the two-term PiS government lost support after a series of scandals and high inflation caused a “deteriorating sense of wellbeing among voters”.

With control of both houses of parliament within reach, Mr Tusk has promised to normalise EU relations after seven years of stand-off and release €35.4 billion in Covid-era funding blocked in a dispute over judicial reforms.

Undoing these PiS-era reforms, seen by critics as politicising both courts and judicial appointments, will be a complicated business.

Equally tricky will be an overhaul of public broadcaster TVP which has become a PiS political mouthpiece.

On Monday a meme trending on social media showed a prominent TVP presenter speaking over a ticker tape reading: “I am looking for a new job.”

After years of vocal support for PiS by the conservative Catholic bishops, liberal Catholic newspaper Tygodnik Powszechny predicted a new government will have a “significant impact in the future relationship between church and state”.