New broom in Poland’s parliament as the opposition takes power

WARSAW — Almost a month after the election that defeated the Law and Justice (PiS) party, Poland’s parliament held its inaugural session and voted in a new leadership showing that power has decisively shifted away from the old ruling party.

The parliament now has a new speaker, former TV host Szymon Hołownia, who was elected with the support of 265 deputies while the PiS candidate, Elżbieta Witek, received only 193 votes in the 460-member parliament.

In his first speech as speaker, a powerful position directing the work of the parliament, Hołownia promised a decisive break with the practices of Law and Justice, in power since 2015.

“Politics isn’t violence. We are going to build a parliament of respect,” Hołownia said.

In a symbol of the new changes, the police barriers that had prevented the public from accessing the parliament buildings were removed — opening up the area for the first time in years. He also promised to make the parliament more accessible to journalists, whose ability to roam the halls of parliament had been severely restricted by PiS.

The new speaker also promised to get rid of the so-called legislative “freezer,” where the speaker would refuse to move forward with inconvenient bills, and that the legislature would stop being a “voting machine for the government.”

“Parliament will not be a breeding ground for corruption. It will never again be a tribune for contempt,” Hołownia said. “My goal and program is simple. I would like parents, when the parliament appears on TV, not to blindfold their children and plug their ears.”

His election underlines that the opposition three-party coalition — made up of the centrist Civic Coalition, led by Donald Tusk, the all-but-certain next prime minister, the center-right Third Way grouping that include’s Hołownia’s party, and the Left — now controls the legislative agenda.

Veto power

Despite that, President Andrzej Duda designated outgoing Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki of PiS as the new PM, giving him four weeks to present a new cabinet and win a confidence vote in parliament. However, even though PiS is the largest party with 194 MPs, all potential partners have rejected its offers to form a coalition.

Morawiecki spoke at length at the inaugural session of the parliament and said: “I’d like to invite everyone to a coalition of Polish affairs.”

If, as is likely, that effort fails, an opposition-led government would take power in mid-December.

After Witek’s defeat, PiS insisted that she be elected as one of the chamber’s six deputy speakers, but the opposition parties balked, calling her out for running roughshod over parliamentary procedure when she had been speaker from 2019 to this year.

Only five deputy speakers — representing all the parties in parliament except for PiS — were elected after Witek failed to win the backing of a majority of MPs.

Ahead of the vote, PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński insisted that if Witek didn’t get the post, then his party would go without a deputy speaker, blaming the opposition for blocking her.

“The opposition was total, they said so themselves, they broke all the rules of democracy, and besides, they were unbelievably vulgar and boorish,” he told reporters.

The change in fortunes is enraging Kaczyński, who was Poland’s de facto ruler for the last eight years. He denounced Civic Coalition for showing “German arrogance” — part of a long-running effort to paint Tusk and his party as being under Berlin’s thumb.

On Sunday, Poland’s independence day, he warned: “There is already a concrete plan prepared, the implementation of which by the European Union would require depriving us of independence, sovereignty, but also the annihilation of the Polish state.”

Although the opposition now controls the parliament and is waiting to form a government, ruling the country will not be easy. Duda, a PiS loyalist, can veto legislation and the new coalition doesn’t have the votes to override him.

In a speech to parliament, Duda defended the record of the PiS government and issued a veiled threat to veto legislation that he feels might undo PiS’s flagship achievements like expanded social welfare payments or any  attempts to “limit, undermine or question the constitutional powers of the president.”

“My veto must not be an excuse for not meeting your election pledges,” Duda added. 

He insisted that he would defend Poland’s constitutional order. In their coalition agreement, the opposition parties have promised to hold the outgoing government and its supporters to account for any illegal activity, and they accuse Duda of having violated the constitution by appointing improperly nominated judges.

While the opposition’s main goal is to remove PiS from power and undo many of the policies it championed over the past eight years, there are deep ideological divisions among the parties.

The most emotive is abortion. There is an agreement to try to roll back a court decision that imposed one of the toughest abortion regimes in Europe, but the Left wants to go much further and called for a meeting Monday with Hołownia to propose a bill that would decriminalize abortion.