Donald Tusk makes his case before a confidence vote in Poland
Prime Minister Donald Tusk made the case Wednesday to parliament that his centrist, pro-European coalition has brought progress to Poland as he seeks to regain political momentum after his camp's stinging loss in the recent presidential election.
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Tusk also acknowledged the new difficulties that he faces in a speech before a vote of confidence which he requested seeking to reaffirm the mandate of his coalition government.
The vote in parliament follows the narrow June 1 defeat of Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski to Karol Nawrocki, a right-wing nationalist backed by U.S. President Donald Trump.
"I am asking for a vote of confidence with full conviction that we have a mandate to govern, to take full responsibility for what is happening in Poland," Tusk said.
He said that his coalition's challenges are greater as a result of the presidential election. But he also argued that the narrow defeat of Trzaskowski indicates that support remains strong for his political camp.
Tusk is expected to survive the vote in the lower house of parliament, the Sejm, scheduled for Wednesday afternoon. He remains the most powerful person in the Central European nation, and his government coalition has a parliamentary majority, with 242 seats in the 460-seat body.
Still, the close presidential race has rattled his coalition, an uneasy alliance of his centrist Civic Coalition, the Left party and the center-right Polish People's Party.
Many have started blaming Tusk for Trzaskowski's defeat, and his coalition partners have begun reevaluating the benefits and costs of sticking it out with him.
There are questions about what Tusk can realistically achieve before the next parliamentary election, scheduled for late 2027, and whether it will even survive that long in a new political environment in which the far right has seen an surge in popularity.
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Polish media and political analysts are debating whether this might be the 68-year-old Tusk's political twilight.
"I know the bitterness of defeat, but I do not know such a word as 'capitulation," Tusk told lawmakers.
Tusk served as Polish prime minister from 2007-2014 and then as president of the European Council from 2014-2019. He resumed his leadership of the country as prime minister again in December 2023 in a country exhausted by the pandemic and inflation, and with political divisions deep and bitter.
In a sign of those divisions, half of the parliament hall was empty, with right-wing lawmakers boycotting his speech on Wednesday. Tusk criticized them for that, suggesting that they were showing disrespect to the nation by being absent.
For Tusk, the challenge is keeping his fractious coalition intact. A failure would trigger the formation of a caretaker government and possibly an early election - a scenario that could return power to the national conservative Law and Justice party, likely in coalition with the the far-right anti-Ukraine Confederation party, whose candidate placed third in the presidential race.
Tusk had long counted on a Trzaskowski victory to end months of gridlock under President Andrzej Duda, who repeatedly blocked his reform agenda. Instead, Nawrocki is now poised to take office, promising strong resistance to Tusk's plans.
In his speech, Tusk acknowledged that that his coalition was already facing challenges that have only grown more difficult.
"We cannot close our eyes to reality. These challenges are greater than we anticipated as a result of the presidential election," he said.
Following the presidential election, criticism has grown that Tusk's government has underdelivered on its campaign promises. Many blame him for contributing to Trzaskowski's loss. Much of the criticism comes from within his coalition.
Joanna Mucha, a deputy education minister from the centrist Third Way alliance, posted a blistering Facebook analysis blaming the defeat on Tusk's party. She argued that law and justice, which backed Nawrocki, ran a focused, data-driven campaign with a fresh face, and she accused Tusk's party of ignoring polling data, relying on campaign consultants who had lost previous elections, and failing to build support beyond its liberal base.
Trzaskowski, who had already lost the presidential race in 2020, "now also carries the baggage of dissatisfaction with the current government," she said.
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