• Elections: Poland holds elections with the Kaczynski party as a big favorite

The government party Law and Justice (PiS) of the nationalist Jaroslav Kaczynski has won the elections held this Sunday in Poland, according to ballot box polls broadcast by local televisions at the close of the polling stations. And he has done so easily that he can rule alone . The defeat of the Citizen Coalition, its main rival, is thus doubly humiliating. The PiS has taken almost 17 points ahead .

In the absence of knowing the results of the scrutiny, the PiS has obtained 43.6% of the support, while the coalition, amalgam of center and liberal parties led by the Civic Platform (PO), a formation led by the president of the Council European, Donald Tusk, would get 27%. As it happened in the European past, the coalition parties have not added more votes than when they were presented separately.

The third most voted force was the leftist coalition , with 11.9% of the support, followed by the Peasant Party (9.6%) and the populist Confederation, with 6.4%.

The Poles thus endorse the conservative, nationalist and ultra-Catholic revolution undertaken by the PiS and forgive its authoritarian drift in exchange for new promises of social assistance , strengthening the traditional family, a polished history and patriotic pride. For the European Union, Kaczynski's victory means another four years on alert.

The PiS has led the polls from the beginning, favored by the good economic situation and the lack of push from the opposition, which has failed to bring to light the darker and populist side of the PiS. The late appointment of Malgorzata Kidava-Blonska as leader of the citizen platform, last September, diminished his options. The candidate remained almost to the end as a stranger, lacked filming and kept a story that the Poles prefer not to hear .

Kidava-Bonska equated the PiS with a shredder of political, social and civil rights, recalling its attempts to end the independence of the judges, nullify the right of women to abortion, demonize LGBT groups and their lack of solidarity with Europe. Citizen Coalition failed to see that voters were willing to sacrifice freedoms for welfare and that legal battles in Brussels are distant and complex.

Kaczynski, on the other hand, extolled recognition obtained by Poland and the Poles abroad. He referred to the elimination of the visa to travel to the United States, a decision that President Donald Trump communicated during the electoral campaign; from the acceptance of the Polish candidate to the European Commission by Parliament and, until the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Olga Tokarczuk. "Polish culture conquers the world," he said.

Overcoming the refugee crisis and without much interest in the fight against climate change, the trick of the PiS has been social and economic policy. "Good times for Poland," was his motto. There they are right. The economy grew by 5.1% last year, the best figure since 2007. There are no distortions in the labor market and public accounts are healthy. The PIS has promised a "zero in black" in the 2020 budgets , for the first time since 1989. Per capita income has risen 23% in the four years of the PiS Government. And all that, accompanied by a social policy that has reduced poverty.

You help the families

Since last July each family receives a support of about 120 euros per month and child. For many Poles, especially in rural areas, that is a lot of money. So much that many Polish mothers are not compensated to go to work.

Experts like Viktor Wojciechovski, of the Polish Society of Economists, believe that this measure, although positive because it relieves the family burden, has long-term harmful effects . "Women with many children exclude themselves from the labor market, do not contribute and that is poverty in the elderly," he warns. For the economic guru of the Polish liberals, Leszek Balcerowicz, architect of the reforms in Poland in the 90s, these measures are "a time bomb" that will trigger public spending and can lead Poland "to a similar economic breakdown to Greece "when trying to subsidize everything. Opposition parties, in general, criticize it for populist and because it creates "clientelism."

Nothing makes Kaczynski change course. And to ensure another four years the support of the population in its revolution towards a "new Poland" , has promised to increase pensions and also interprofessional minimum wage from 2020, from the current 685 euros to 915 euros in 2033.

But the PiS would not have been the PiS if in this campaign it had opened a truce in what the party lives as a crusade. The attacks of Kaczynski, what he calls "poisonous LGBT ideology", have been visceral and had the blessing of the almighty Catholic Church, which keeps its influence and power intact in the country, despite the scandals of sexual abuse in which They have become their ministers.

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