Conservative President Karol Nawrocki poses the biggest challenge to Poland’s centrist coalition government as it marks two years since the parliamentary elections that brought it to power, according to political scientist Antoni Dudek.
Antoni DudekPR24/Robert Bartosewicz
Speaking to state news agency PAP, Dudek said the government “has run out of steam” two years after taking power and is now struggling to function under „a hostile president.”
The current ruling coalition, made up of Civic Coalition (KO), the Left, Poland 2050 and the Polish People’s Party (PSL), came to power after the 2023 parliamentary elections, ending eight years of rule by the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party.
Dudek, a professor at Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw, described the ruling alliance as a “cordon coalition,” meaning one united more by shared opposition to its predecessor than by internal harmony.
He said it is “neither deeply divided nor especially united,” comparing it to previous coalitions: less conflicted than the PiS–Self-Defense–League of Polish Families alliance of the mid-2000s, but less cohesive than the Civic Platform–PSL coalition that governed from 2007 to 2014.
“The main problem for this coalition is the president,” Dudek said. “That is something they will have to live with until the end. The problem has grown since Karol Nawrocki took office.”
Dudek referred to Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s earlier public countdown to the end of former president Andrzej Duda’s term, calling it a political miscalculation.
“After replacing Duda with Nawrocki, the coalition has gone from bad to worse. You can administer the country without a supportive president, but you cannot achieve much with one who openly seeks the government’s downfall,” he said.
The analyst also pointed to growing internal weakness, particularly within Poland 2050, led by Szymon Hołownia.
Dudek said the group is “starting to fall apart” amid its leader’s difficulties, though he doubted that its members would defect to PiS or the far-right Confederation party.
“They will more likely scatter between the Civic Coalition and the PSL,” he added, saying the government will continue to struggle with “a loss of momentum” but is likely to endure until the end of its term.
Dudek predicted that while the coalition might lose its parliamentary majority before the next election, it would probably survive the full term since “no alternative majority can be built in this parliament.”
He dismissed speculation that the PSL and Confederation could form an alliance with PiS, saying “no one in PiS takes that seriously.”
He said the strongest factor keeping the current coalition together is “the fear of PiS returning to power.”
However, he found it unlikely that the four governing parties—sometimes referred to as the “October 15 coalition,” after their election date—would run together in the next vote.
(rt/gs)
Source: PAP
