Karol Nawrocki, conservative candidate for president of Poland, is one of two main candidates vying to take high office after President Andrzej Duda, whose 10-year tenure is due to end this year.
The date of the elections, May 18th, was announced this week. While the president’s role is mostly ceremonial, with it comes the opportunity to veto bills, a function which can then only be overruled by a three-fifths majority in parliament.
Duda, an ally of the conservative opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, has for the past year tried to push back on the current government’s liberal agenda.
He vetoed a bill aimed at liberalising access to the morning-after pill, and he has also vowed to veto any attempt to soften Poland’s strict abortion law—a move he eventually did not have to take due to the parliament itself voting down the planned amendment.
Duda has blocked attempts by the government to undo judicial reforms implemented by the previous conservative government, and the president has also issued pardons to PiS politicians who had been jailed by the current cabinet.
The government, led by Europhile Donald Tusk, has initiated acts of vengeance against its political rivals ever since it came into power a year ago—it has jailed opposition figures, purged state institutions, and ignored court rulings made by PiS-appointed judges.
Justice minister Adam Bodnar stated last year that they were “waiting” for Andrzej Duda’s term as president to end so they can begin to “fully restore the rule of law in the country”—i.e., have complete control to push through their liberal ideology.
Tusk’s Civic Coalition has nominated Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski as its presidential nominee—a proponent of LGBT rights and an opponent of the abortion law.
Nawrocki—head of the Institute of National Remembrance and an independent candidate supported by PiS—is shaping up as Trzaskowski’s main rival.
In a recent interview he said that as a “Christian and a Catholic”, he is “pro-life from conception to natural death.” He noted that he supports the current abortion law, which only permits abortion in cases of rape, incest, or serious danger to the mother’s health.
Nawrocki also firmly opposes the introduction of same-sex civil partnerships, adding that,
in Poland, we have two genders, and, as the constitution states, marriage is a union between a woman and a man.
With regard to the war in Ukraine, Nawrocki has gone against the mainstream narrative supported by both the government and the opposition, which believes that Ukraine should be accepted into the EU and NATO:
Currently, I do not envision Ukraine in any such structure—neither the European Union nor NATO—until important civilisational issues for Poland are resolved.
“A country that is not able to account for a very brutal crime against 120,000 of its neighbours cannot be part of international alliances,” he added, referring to the Volhynia massacres, in which Ukrainian nationalists killed around 100,000 ethnic Polish civilians during the Second World War.
According to the latest opinion polls, among the 12 candidates who already entered the race, Trzaskowski and Nawrocki will go through to the second round of voting, and the run-off will be won by the liberal nominee.
