Why did Law and Justice lose?

Why did Law and Justice lose?
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23.10.2007
Polish democracy has spoken. Voters have chosen the major opposition Civic Platform over the ruling Law and Justice party. This may come as a surprise, as it was the Law and Justice Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczynski who insisted on pre-term elections. The tables seem to have turned in the final phase of the campaign, after PM's Kaczynski's defeat in the debate with opposition leader Donald Tusk. Was that the only reason why the ruling Law and Justice lost the ballot?
Report by Joanna Najfeld
In an unexpected statement on Polish Radio, the outgoing Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński admitted to having lost his pre-election TV debate with the leader of Civic Platform, Donald Tusk. Just after the debate, Kaczynski was convinced he won. Now he's changed his mind.
'I should have been in a better shape for the debate, or evaded it altogether.'
The debate was a turning point in the campaign, agrees Marek Jan Chodakiewicz of the Institute of World Politics:
'It seems that since the debate, Tusk has gathered a lot of momentum and that was very unfortunate from the point of view of Law and Justice party. But when you are on the roll, the wave swells and the public opinion joins the winner. And that was the result.'
The outgoing PM Kaczyński also blames the media for a biased representation of political parties. In his opinion, voter mobilization campaigns on television were not so impartial as declared:
'There was this strange campaign on public TV - "get out to vote - go change Poland". The "get out to vote" part was fine, but this "change Poland" thing was a suggestion to vote against the government.'
Voter mobilization campaigns targeted mostly the youth, who supported predominantly the Civic Platform. Marek Jan Chodakiewicz wasn't surprised:
'Young people don't remember communism. Young people were brought up in the void of nihilism and moral relativism and the Kaczynskis have been singularly unable to translate into modern Polish the necessity of cleaning up historical mess made by communism. They seemed increasingly retro and rather anachronistic for the young. Why? Because after 1989 young people yearned for consumer goods and for mass culture as epitomized by MTV, not by the Institute of National Remembrance. Most couldn't care less.'
Law and Justice was punished for their pride, says Łukasz Warzecha of the FAKT daily. Groups of voters that could have supported them, turned away, offended by the rhetoric more than ideas declared by Law and Justice.
'Young professionals, conservative people living in big Polish cities, small entrepreneurs... all these people heard many very unpleasant things from Jaroslaw Kaczynski. They just decided that the Law and Justice party had to be punished and they punished it.'
Law and Justice let down a large part of the conservative electorate, who felt the party did not practice what they preached. The defeat of Law and Justice was not just a question of the ballot, but of their general failure to live up to the conservative voters' expectations, says opinion columnist Paweł Milcarek:
'The problem was that they broke a kind of an agreement with the conservative opinion. The so-called Fourth Republic was supposed to be built upon the values of Civilization of Life. However, it turned out that when it came to the protection of life, pornography laws or coherent pro-family policy, Law and Justice contradicted its pre-election declarations. The second thing was that they tried to replace a real reform of the state with just the appearance of it. Conservative voters just have had enough.'
Will the Civic Platform government fulfill their promises of an economic miracle for Poland and a "better life for everyone" remains to be seen