• Elections: Poland chooses between continuity and change in the second round of the presidential elections
  • Coronavirus.Poland celebrates the first EU presidential elections in times of pandemic

Ultra-conservative Andrzej Duda will remain at the Polish Headquarters for another five years. Thus, he equates with a second term the social democrat Aleksander Kwasniewski , the only one of all the presidents that Poland has had since the establishment of democracy, beginning with Lech Walesa in 1990. He was on the point of not succeeding. His rival, the liberal Rafal Trzaskowski , managed during the campaign to remove from the closet the millions of Poles who did not dare to say enough to the democratic drift of the hegemonic government party Law and Justice (PiS), of which Duda is his sponsored.

48 years old and a lawyer by profession, Duda has been the letter of the leader of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the PiS in his departure against the European Union, his Trojan horse in reforms that Brussels is suspicious of and which he justifies with a nationalist speech seeking to compensate the Poles for the wrongs of history. In the battery of laws adopted by the PiS government - and always sanctioned by Duda - there is the norm that punishes "Polish concentration camps" with up to three years in prison. The Holocaust Law was criticized by Israel for considering that it challenged historical truth.

The son of a couple of professors from the Krakow School of Mines and Metallurgy, Duda's political career is linked to brothers Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski. In 2006, at the age of 34, and with Jaroslaw as prime minister, he became deputy justice secretary. He was a deputy, MEP and deputy secretary of President Lech until his death in the Smolensk (Russia) air tragedy . Meanwhile, he tried unsuccessfully to seize the mayor's office in Krakow, his hometown.

Duda had no face for the vast majority of Poles until the end of 2014, when - already with the 2015 presidential elections in sight - Jaroslaw Kaczynski announced against all odds that he was not attending the Headquarters of the State, which his brother tragically left vacant. Instead, the PiS strongman launched Duda's candidacy. On May 24, 2015, at the age of 43, the unknown candidate became President of the Poles with 51.55% of the votes. They were the tightest presidential elections lived until then in Poland.

Against abortion and LGTBI people

He started his mandate in cohabitation, with the liberal Civic Platform (PO) party in the Government, although without Donald Tusk , who left his post to become President of the European Council. The October parliamentary elections ended that cohabitation. The sixth economy of the EU took a right turn and the PiS conquered the Legislative by an overwhelming majority.

Duda - always underpinned by Kazcynski, although he does not officially belong to the party - is a survivor, like all docile politicians. He makes up for his lack of charisma and executive power with social and economic promises from the PiS program and government. Its niches are the same: the most disadvantaged, the rural environment, traditionalist families and the powerful Catholic Church. Duda has taken part in the debate against abortion that brought thousands of women to the streets on the so-called "Black Monday" and a week ago, in the midst of the electoral campaign, she signed a proposal to prohibit the adoption of same-sex couples. It was not an innocent initiative. His rival, Trazkowski, for whom the LGTBI groups had asked for the vote, was hot on his heels in the polls. "Don't listen to these idiots about human rights. Those people have nothing to do with normal people," Duda spokesmen have repeated in a campaign that faced pride and prejudice.

The strategy paid off . Faced with the changes represented by the pro-European and very liberal mayor of Warsaw, Duda appealed to the continuity of the most conservative Poland, the one that benefits the most from the rights, freedoms and economic aid of the EU, but who feel a rash for a club dominated by an old invading power called Germany, and overly condescending to the enemy: Russia.

Trump's most loyal European ally

It has not gone unnoticed that a week before the appointment with the polls, Duda traveled to the United States to meet with President Donald Trump. It presented itself as the most loyal and caring European and NATO ally. The meeting came days after Trump announced the withdrawal of US troops from Germany, which Poland would welcome.

In the final stretch of this second lap, Duda has been involved in a scandal from which he has tried to escape by removing ghosts from the past, in true PiS style. The Polish weekly 'Fakt' revealed that Duda granted a convict in March to a convict for sexual abuse and lifted the restraining order weighing on him for abusing his own daughter and at her request, now of legal age.

Duda responded to the dissemination of this information from 'Fakt', owned by the German conglomerate Axel Springer, accusing Germany of meddling in the elections. "It is a ruthless, dirty campaign, directed against me personally. Do the Germans want to elect the president of Poland? That is an injustice and I will not allow it," he said at a campaign rally in the Dolny Slask region. "I appeal to the German ambassador in Warsaw to intervene. We do not want this type of foreign intervention. Poland does not interfere in the German elections," said Duda campaign spokesman Adam Bielan for his part .

German government spokesman Steffen Seibert flatly rejected the allegations, but Duda had already scattered the seeds they seize so well on Poland's fallows when appealing to resentment and conspiracy.

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