Poland: a signal for the parliamentary elections?
The national conservative governing PiS party has won the European elections in Poland with over 42 percent of the vote, according to preliminary results. The opposition "European Coalition" trailed behind with roughly 39 percent. Polish media discuss the results with an eye to this autumn's parliamentary elections.
Don't give up!
Gazeta Wyborcza offers the opposition words of encouragement:
“It's a pity that the democratic camp has lost the first half of the election match. But the damage is limited. We can draw important conclusions. This failure doesn't mean that the Democrats are doomed to lose the parliamentary elections in October, even if the psychological impact and the minimal success of the European coalition will make things difficult. ... The Democratic camp must show unity and strong leadership and present a plan in the coming months. The worst thing that could happen would be if the alliance collapses and gives up. The loser is not just he who loses by a narrow margin, but he who contents himself with defeat. Poland deserves better than the PiS government.”
Opposition keeps making the same mistake
The victory of the ruling party next autumn is written on the wall, writes Rzeczpospolita:
“The results of the European elections show clearly: it's naive to believe that voters will elect the opposition out of fear of the PiS. Of course there are voters who fear the PiS. But not enough to let us hope that the opposition could win. The opposition's problem is that even after three and a half years it still hasn't developed a Plan B for the event that voters don't just go to the polls to vote for the lesser evil but to seek the best possible solution for themselves. ... This didn't work in 2015 and it hasn't worked in May 2019. All good things come in threes, people say. But in this case it seems Albert Einstein's proposition applies, according to which the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”