Poland November 2006: The First Round of the Local Elections
Introduction and background to the elections
It is a year since the Law and Justice (PiS) party came to power in Poland with the election of its leader, Lech Kaczynski, as president. PiS also became the largest single party in the Sejm.[1] The honeymoon for PiS was short-lived. Tensions quickly arose, especially regarding the composition of the coalition government, which excluded the other post-Solidarity rightwing party, Citizen's Platform (PO), but included politicians previously excluded from mainstream. Recurrent cabinet crises raised the prospect of a premature re-run of parliamentary elections.
Among the concrete issues were the apparent difficulties in reaching a budget decision within the constitutional time constraints in January of this year. Threats of a no confidence vote Sejm where PiS was a minority also haunted the government. This came to a head with most recently with the break-up and re-formation of the now majority coalition government after the dismissal of and then reappointment of Andrzej Lepper as Deputy Prime Minister and Agriculture Minister in September 2006. All this seems to be a far cry from the "quick creation of an effective government"[2] as promised on the eve of Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz's nomination for the post of Prime Minister of Poland in September, 2005. Indeed, whatever the party's confidence in Marcinkiewicz's Prime Ministerial ability, the president's quickly waned when he was replaced in July by Lech Kaczynski's older twin brother (older by 45 minutes), Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who also happens to be the chairman of PiS. The rule of the twins was a gift to satirists and cartoonists but the first test of its acceptability to Poles was the local elections in November, 2006.
The opposition Citizens' Platform party (PO) which has wide media support to back its standing in the Sejm was a looming menace to Kaczynski's parliamentary control. The ruling coalition, combining pro-market PiS with Andrezej Lepper's Self-Defence/Samoobrana (SO) which has criticised the social costs of capitalism and the arbitrarily labelled "ultra-conservative" League of Polish Families (LPR)[3] faced a tough challenge to stay united.. Unlike speculation about early of parliamentary elections, the local elections could not be annulled and the polls to elect the now numerous local mayors and council members – not to mention the swarms of representatives for each of the sixteen different voivodships – went ahead on schedule. Around 47,000 council seats were available, along with around 2,500 mayoral posts.
Warsaw was a key battle ground. Being mayor of the Polish capital had acted as the launching pad for Lech Kaczynski's presidential ambitions. A future rival from PO would hope to take control of the city which would damage Kaczsynski's authority as president and weaken his re-election chances. By promoting former premier Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz as the PiS candidate the president probably hoped to avoid Warsaw becoming headquarters of a bitter rival. The PO candidate, Hannah Gronkiewicz-Waltz had a track record as a neo-conservative reformer regardless of the social consequences which made her popular in the West but her image would have to be softened to attract a broad constituency unhappy with the first year of Kaczynski's rule. Although PO scored decisive wins in Solidarity's birthplace Gdansk and Poland's old mining capital Katowice, key races like that in the capital went to a second round.
Official Local Election Results First Round from some major cities
City Mayor Council Seats Turnout
Warsaw Gronkiewicz-Waltz PO 32 52.3%
34.40%
PiS 17
Marcinkiewicz
38.40% LiD 11
Lodz Kropiwnicki PiS 12 45.8%
35.48%
PO 10
Kwiatkowski
27.30% PSL 6
LID 4
SO 4
Krakow Majchrowski PiS 16 39.7%
42.31%
PO 13
Terlecki
26.20% PSL 4
Gdansk Adamowicz PO 18 46.8%
60.85%
PiS 9
Jaworski
29.66% SO 3
Katowice Uszok PO 21 34%
73.00%
PiS 16
Szpyrka
11.08% LiD 8
Local Election Day
BHHRG sent two representatives to monitor the proceedings in the cities of Warsaw and Lodz and the smaller towns of Pruszkow and Grodzisk Maz. The observers visited a total of six polling stations and talked to election officials, pollsters, voters and non-voters. In speaking to the chairmen of the polling stations concerned, all of whom represented the National Election Commission (PKW), the following information was given about public turnout:
Warsaw
Polling station No 262 @11.45 299/2,238 registered voters had voted
Pruszkow
Polling station No 17 @13.00 c.400 (c.30%)*/c.1600 registered voters
had voted
Polling station No 20 @13.10 (unwilling to give interview/information)
Grodzisk Maz
Polling station No 12 @14.05 c.500/2058 registered voters had voted
Polling station No 13 @14.00 c.7%/c.2000 registered voters had voted
Lodz
Polling station No 266 @17.30 ≤c.20%/1932 registered voters had voted
These figures reflect the chairman's information regarding the number of votes cast in their individual polling stations. Some preferred to give an exact figure, others preferring a rough estimate or percentage. In the case of polling station No 17 in Pruszkow, both a rough figure and the chairman's own rough percentage do not correspond. (See the table above.).
Aside from inconsistencies in the way figures were presented by the chairmen, BHHRG observed a number of other irregularities in the voting procedure:
- Voting secrecy generally not observed. This was due in part to insufficient facilities within the polling stations – such as in Warsaw No 262, where only one voting booth was available for the 2,238 registered voters! It also stemmed from the lack of insistence within the polling stations that voters should not be able to see other people's ballot papers. More importantly, nor should voters have been able to consult or influence one another over their choice of candidates. Public discussion of whom to support was seen on a number of occasions and in all the polling stations visited, but most overtly in Pruszkow No 17, where a group was seen directing one another on a school bench, whilst casually patting a small dog (see picture). The lengthy and complicated ballot papers[4] were likely contributors to this very slack conduct, and all but one of the chairmen interviewed admitted that they had witnessed problems with the deciphering of the various papers and, at times, had felt obliged to intervene and help voters – particularly the elderly – with this problem.
- The question of lists for voters currently living in other EU countries. This was a list that supposedly allowed returning voters to cast their votes, but which seemed only a real concern to one of the chairmen, who said that he did have such a list, but that the procedural requirements were such that they did not have to stamp the voters' passports to prove that they had voted, thereby in theory permitting the voter to vote again in a different polling station. Most polling stations did not have such lists.
- Erroneous names on the lists. As far as BHHRG could gather, there had been several voters' names found on voting lists, where the voters in question were either deceased or should no longer have been registered. This was discovered and apparently rectified in Warsaw No 262.
They were very few observers – indeed BHHRG's representatives found only a single observer with whom they could talk. This was an independent observer, apparently "observing for her own sake" and said that if anyone was interested in her results, she would willingly divulge them. She was located in Grodzisk Maz No 12 and, confirming the view of the polling station's chairman, said that procedural matters were "OK". She did, however, have no objections to the number of people voting with ballots on their knees in full view of other people in the polling station..
Exit pollsters were encountered in only one of the polling stations visited – namely Lodz No 266, where there was a couple of students working for GfK Polonia, a group based in Warsaw. According to the pair, there were 80 GfK pollsters in Lodz alone and the group had a large presence nationally. They refused to give any statistics regarding turnout or people's choice of candidate as gauged by the exit opinions.
Regarding the neutrality of PKW election commission representatives, it seems that the majority of commission workers at the polling stations were unaffiliated to the parties up for election, but in Pruszkow No 17 the chairman said that "mostly, the commissioners represent different parties" and, presumably, were casting their votes at the polling stations in which they were stationed throughout the day.
A family day out at Pruszkow No 17 – pets included!
Vox Pop
During the Election Day, BHHRG took the opportunity to gauge several voters' opinions on the proceedings.
We overheard a group of elderly voters in Pruszkow No 17 say that they found the voting to be very difficult because of the complexity and the length of the ballot papers. Our observers asked them about the turnout, and then the general state of play in current Polish politics. One man said that he thought the low turnout was a distortion of the media, and that it was in fact very high (even though the chairman at the very same polling station had said it was low). He added that the EU is an obstacle to good relations with Russia and that it had betrayed Poland with regard to the German-Russian pipeline under the Baltic. Moreover, he said that Poland was "bleeding to death" as a result of the exodus of Polish youth to western EU states. He blamed the last left-wing coalition [the Democratic Left Alliance – SLD] for false promises regarding the EU and said that PiS were fine, provided they and SO stuck to the right. He said that he voted for "the right".
Similar views were echoed in Pruszkow No 20 as most interviewees stated that they had voted for PiS. However, going against the opinion of the elderly gentleman in Pruszkow No 17, was the view of the polling station chairman in Lodz No 266, who said that "you should not be fooled" by the impression that there may have been even a moderate turnout. He said that groups of voters would wander into the polling station sporadically but linger over the voting process, helping generate the illusion of a higher number of voters.
Conclusions
So far as we could see, the trend to apathy of Polish voters has not been reversed. There were small numbers of voters out in polling stations on 12th November and even amongst the voting public disillusionment was, in places, near the surface. Be it with the ruling parties, the voting procedure, or with the Polish state of affairs since EU accession, the sense of disappointment was often clearly expressed. Some individuals did speak favourably of PiS, saying for instance that they were "satisfied" with their achievements but without specifying what they were.
The voting procedure in Poland seems poorly supervised within the majority of the polling stations observed by BHHRG. The whims of the individual chairman served as the only apparent procedural regulation. Moreover, the extraordinary long and complicated ballot papers (and booklets in some places) meant that understanding how to vote was for many people was taxingly high hurdle to have to negotiate before the delights of actually deciding which candidates to select!
As for the final results given by the PKW, the domination of PO was surprising, not simply in terms of the wide gap between PO and PiS and other parties, but also because of official turnout figures. That 52.3% of voters may have come out to vote in Warsaw simply does not correspond to BHHRG experiences. Of course, the huge numbers of administrative posts recently created in Poland means that there are plenty of people with a vested interest in the vote, but even taking that into account, it is hard to credit claims that more than one in two Varsovians went to the polls on 12th November. But, in a country democratic enough to join the other 24 EU states, official foreign observer missions like the OSCE's ODIHR (based in Warsaw itself!) are not "needed" to verify these statistics.
All this leaves only the second round of local elections, due on Sunday 26th November to give us official answers to the remaining 'local questions'. Most eyes will be cast in the direction of the race for the Warsaw 'Presidency', which these days many see as the fast track to the Presidential palace.
Visit to Lodz
The city of Lodz has recently received a puff in the Independent as a one of Poland's boom towns and a place suitable for property investment by ordinary British speculators: "Cities like Lodz are undergoing an economic recovery, thanks to the huge amounts of cash and foreign investment opened up by Poland's entry in the EU. Structural funds from the EU alone are worth a staggering $60bn (£31.6bn) until 2013 and Poland's economic growth remains a healthy 5 per cent. All along the two and a half miles of the recently renovated Piotrkowska Street, Europe's longest high street, the fashionable boutiques, bars and restaurants are bustling with locals as they savour the transformation of a city where half the work force was out of a job as recently as the early 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union."[5]
Getting to Lodz along stretches of the very dubious main road, the E8, with juggernauts tearing past at high speed along unkempt surfaces, BHHRG representatives arrived in a city of destitution. Far from resembling an economic recovery, much of Lodz looked decrepit and destined for further decay. Yes, there were some western features, thinly filming the neglected features of the city – such as large advertising showing West European products, but this was clearly no more than a veneer. The supposedly "recently renovated Piotrkowska Street" may be "the best place to organize a pre-wedding meeting for your friends" i.e. stag night[6], but it is a street littered with empty buildings and half-finished facades. The best kempt building along the city's main street was a beautiful nineteenth century construction, but which houses Nordea, a Norwegian bank and now the largest bank in the whole of Poland.
Regarding the question of how "the region's famous redbrick textile factories are being brought back to life as fashionable apartments", a local polling station official gave the following response: "there is some sort of strange movement here […] there are more foreigners, and more buildings and hotels have been erected. There is some 'activity'". The activity in question is partly visible, but what it contributes to is the rise in housing costs within Poland's urban centres, a trend which is effectively pricing indigenous Poles out of the market. In a bid to generate a quick-return property industry, many new EU members, such as Latvia, Estonia and Poland, are enticing West European property-rich individuals to buy up cheap assets on these eastern property ladders. This produces a superficial GDP growth as prices rise but in reality the inflation in housing prices and rents quickly outstrips the locals' capacity to pay rising rents or their ability to save for a deposit on a property.[7] West European "suckers" entering the market after it has started to "boom" sustain the property pyramid – for the moment.
While central city properties may be being bought by these foreigners, on the edges of cities Western hypermarkets are drawing all local merchants' business out of the centre and causing inner-city jobs to disappear. A couple of hundred low paid jobs in a hypermarket make a good headline and mask the disappearance of many more self-employed shopkeepers and their staff. This was another trend immediately visible in Lodz, where the first (and biggest sign) of construction was that of an Ahold (Dutch-owned) hypermarket on the E72 towards the city's centre. As one member of the Ministry for Labour and Social Policy commented, "the high streets [of Lodz] have been destroyed by supermarkets […] shopkeepers have lost all"[8]. Migration to Western Europe is many people's economic salvation, but will they ever return to Lodz's property market?
Scenes upon arriving in Lodz via E72
Piotrkowska Street, central Lodz
Interviews with party representatives in Warsaw
BHHRG was able to interview several key representatives of the ruling coalition parties – most notably Andrzej Lepper, the Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development, party chairman of SO, and recently re-instated Deputy Prime Minister. Mr. Lepper spoke of his determination to improve Polish production quotas approved by in the EU parliament and EU Commission saying that achievements had been made regarding Polish milk and fish exports. However, he added that the fundamental EU Treaty for Poland is unfair, since it renders Poland a "second category member state". Polish farmers only receive the equivalent of 25% of the subsidies allocated to Western EU farmers per cow, etc.
Back at home, Mr. Lepper feels that tension within the coalition stems from the patronising attitude of the PiS party (who hold the most seats within the coalition) at ministerial level. Since the coalition was re-formed relations between Lepper's party and other ministries, such as with the Ministry of Defence, under Radek Sikorski (PiS),. Have shown signs of more coherence and co-operation. However, Lepperconsiders that the issue of Polish soldiers in Iraq still generates tension inside the government.
As for the current elections, he was unable to comment prior to the release of official results (due out he following day, 14th November). However, he felt or hoped that at the local level, his SO was bound to be a major force. When asked whether he trusted official results, he said that distortion on a national or local level would be unlikely, but that there were very big inconsistencies regarding, for example, campaign airtime on television prior to the elections, which was an obvious political injustice. To this he added that "of course the results do not reflect reality, because the turnout is so low".
The same question was posed to the League of Polish Families (LPR) spokesperson and member of the central committee for the Polish Youth Movement, Anna Sirkovska, who said that she did not feel there were any major violations of the election procedure as such. Her main concern was the results. For her and for LPR, the office of Mayor ('President') of Warsaw holds particular strategic importance in Polish politics, as is visible from Lech Kaczynski's transition from Warsaw Mayor to Polish President. However, she said that the LPR candidate did not really stand much of a chance in the face of PO's Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz (former deputy chairman of the EBRD) and PiS's Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz (previously Polish Deputy Prime Minister).
Relating to the recent calls by Kenneth Hillas, an aide in the US Embassy in Warsaw, for the sacking of Deputy Prime Minister and chairman of LPR, Roman Giertych, Ms. Sirkovska said that she thought it to be simply "imperialistic slander". In her view, this incident had in fact strengthened Mr. Giertych's public image. Maybe Mr. Hillas lack of diplomatic tact has backfired to Mr. Giertych's advantage but it was a very public warning sign that Washington is unhappy with the Kaczynski twins in power even though long-term Washington resident, Radek Sikorski still holds the post of Polish Defence Minister.
The outcome of the runoffs on Sunday 26th November may be overshadowed for many Poles by the tragic deaths of 23 miners dismantling redundant equipment at the recently closed Halemba mine in Ruda Slaska but how Warsaw votes in particular could decide the long-term viability of the current coalition government.
[1] See "Poland: Europe's Neo-con Nation": http://www.bhhrg.org/CountryReport.asp?CountryID=19
[2] See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4288666.stm
[3] http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1932575,00.html
[4] In total there were 4 different ballot papers: an A3-sized city council candidates' paper; a slightly smaller local/regional council candidates' paper; a presidential candidates' paper for the position of mayor; a seven-page long 'booklet' paper for various seats in the voivodships.
[5] http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article1935932.ece
[6] http://www.ryanair.com/site/RU/dests.php?loc=LCJ&show=1
[7] See Erik S. Reinert and Rainer Kattel (2004), The Qualitative Shift in European Integration: Towards Permanent Wage Pressures and a 'Latin-Americanization' of Europe?. PRAXIS Working Paper no 17/2004. Available: http://www.praxis.ee/data/WP_17_20042.pdf.
[8] >From interview with Marcin Dongala, member of Ministry for Labour and Social Policy and editor-in-chief of SO official newspaper (Warsaw 10/11/06).
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