Poland has just elected its new parliament. There are three things that should be noticed. Firstly, the governing party 'Civic Platform' won its second parliamentary election in row. This has not been achieved by any party in the short history of post-communist Poland and so is worthy of note. The new government should be formed by the same parties i.e. the Civic Platform (39%) and Polish People’s Party (8%). Secondly, the relatively bad result of the Democratic Left Alliance which received only 8% of the votes despite being predicted about 12-15% and were tipped to become an essential part of the new governing coalition. Thirdly, the seemingly stable 4-party political configuration has been ruined by Palikot’s Support Movement, a populist party that got 10% of votes and came third overall. Law and Justice (30%) remained the main opposition party.
It is true that the election turnout was rather low. Only about 49% of voters decided to take part in the election. Nevertheless, such a low result is typical for Polish parliamentary elections. Once again Poles proved the social scientists’ theory that they turn out for civil duties more eagerly during the presidential and local elections. But then the election campaign was irritating. It seemed that the candidates were more interested in testing the voter's resistance to ascetics or challenging their intellectual abilities than encouraging them to vote the 'right' way. Let me give you a small image of the Polish campaign. Don’t worry if you cannot speak Polish – you’ll get the same amount of priceless information as any other Polish voter! So here you have a young Polish leftist’s campaign clip or its political friend’s one, soft pornography! But there were also some really touching moments were available, some thrillers and something for family cinema’s fans, too.
But you do not have to be a prophet to guess that the politics in Poland isn’t all about making terrible films. There are certain issues that which should be discussed. Moreover some of them, if not the majority – are related with the EU.
More about these issues later this week, only in Under Eastern Eyes!
