Incumbent Andrzej Duda wins Polish presidential election - commission

[muriel_volestrangler]

Source: The Guardian

Incumbent Andrzej Duda has won Poland’s presidential election, after results released on Monday morning gave him 51.2% of votes with almost all the ballots counted, the National Electoral Commission said.

Liberal challenger Rafał Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw, was trailing with 48.8%. The NEC said remaining uncounted votes were unlikely to sway the final outcome.

The knife-edge second-round runoff was pitched by both sides as a battle for the future of Poland, with Duda promising another term backing the legislative agenda of Poland’s ruling populist party and Trzaskowski offering to be the face of a different Poland.

Duda fought a divisive campaign in which he promised to back “family values” at the expense of LGBT rights and frequently used homophobic rhetoric. His anticipated win will give the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) control of most of the levers of power for several more years, allowing it to continue an agenda that has eroded the rule of law and judicial independence, putting Poland on a collision course with the EU.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/13/incumbent-andrzej-duda-wins-polish-presidential-election-commission

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Bummer; that gives Poland 3 years of unfettered right wing government, no matter how bad it becomes.

[rpannier]

1. Be curious how the EU deals with what's coming

They have had problems with the government trying to undermine an independent judiciary
The moment they go back to trying to undermine the judiciary again, the EU should start the process of kicking Poland out.
That really is the only way to get their attention

[soothsayer]

3. Booo

[rkleinberger]

4. The EU needs to either remove Poland (and Hungary) from the EU or sanction them

The EU is weak in these matters.

[0rganism]

5. foreshadowing for US elections in November

all the fascists have to do is keep it close, Putin's ready to cover the spread.

[Mosby]

6. Andrzej Duda, Polish president who vowed no reparations for Jews, appears to eke out reelection

Poland’s right-wing president, whose reelection campaign traded on anti-Semitic tropes, appears to have won a second term.

Andrzej Duda garnered 51.2% of the vote — the slimmest margin of victory since the fall of communist rule — with 99% of ballots counted. His challenger, Rafal Trzaskowski, the liberal mayor of Warsaw, can contest the results.

In the campaign’s final days, as it became clear that the election would be close, Duda and his allies increasingly suggested — including on state television — that Trzaskowski would sell out the country to Jewish interests. The mayor did not explicitly endorse paying reparations to Holocaust survivors and their descendants, something that Poland has been a standout among European nations in refusing to offer, but said he would be open to discussing the issue.

“Only someone without a Polish soul, a Polish heart and a Polish mind could say something like that,” the leader of Duda’s Law and Justice Party said last week, according to a report in Politico. “Mr. Trzaskowski clearly doesn’t have them, seeing as he says that this is open to discussion.”


https://www.jta.org/quick-reads/andrzej-duda-polish-president-who-vowed-no-reparations-for-jews-appears-to-eke-out-reelection

Interesting how the Guardian ignored the Antisemitism surrounding his candidacy.

[Judi Lynn]

7. Kicking. n/t