On October 15, the PiS won parliamentary elections – his list won the highest number of votes – but lost power. Although the minute of her devotion has been delayed to the maximum, holding a farce with a two-week government, she yet moved on to the opposition for the first time since November 2015.
The first period in opposition – completed by an ongoing seismic vacation – was surely not easy for the PiS. The failure of power is painful for all party, especially if it ruled so long that its regulation begins to treat as something natural and obvious. However, everything indicates that the real problems of the Law and Justice will not begin until the next political period 2024–2025.
It can start with the earthquake that it would be Decision of the State Election Commission to reject the accounts of the PiS Committee and to remove that organization from a crucial part of the grant. This could be 75 percent at most.
Then the PiS awaits the presidential election, which the organization candidate – whoever will be the organization candidate – will be very hard to win. The defeats in the presidential election and the deficiency of money will deepen and intensify and so increasingly visible interior conflicts within the group, possibly leading to centrifugal movements.
The iron level holds tight
Before considering the challenges facing the Law and Justice in the close future, it is worth looking at what happened with Kaczyński's organization between October 15, 2023 and August of this year.
The PiS is surely much weaker present than before the October elections. It lost its power in the country and with it control of key institutions for its post-2015 arrangement of power specified as the prosecutor's office or TVP. The Law and Justice and the sympathetic part of the public opinion of the changes made in the national prosecutor's office or in the public media are considered illegal – however, it is incapable to do anything about it soon. As long as the current parliamentary majority continues, the Law and Justice will not regain its influence on these institutions.
In the local elections, the PiS did not win any crucial fresh base in the local government, and one more time confirmed that it was a non-countable organization in the game for larger cities. It besides lost its power in 2 provincial Seyms, which it controlled between 2018 and 2024: Łódź and Podlaskie. In both provinces, the PiS won the largest number of votes in the parliamentary elections, in Podlaskie as much as 43.47 percent, which translated into precisely half of the seats in the Sejm.
Loss of power in these voivodships was due to the full deficiency of coalition capacity of the PiS and interior divisions in the party. In the Podlasie PiS, theoretically, it was adequate to convince 1 councillor of the Confederacy – known from the memes “Mr Areczek” by Stanisław Derehajła – to get the majority. Instead, 2 PiS councillors, quarreling with the party, switched to the fresh majority of the Civic Coalition and the 3rd Way.
It was close to repeating a akin script in Małopolska, where the PiS won 43.9% of the votes in the parliamentary elections, ensuring itself a stand-alone majority. However, the opposition of local structures to the election, as indicated by Jarosław Kaczyński, Łukasz Kmita for the marshal of the voivodship, and the conflict between local activists associated with erstwhile Prime Minister Beata Szydło and those associated with Ryszard Terlecki, led to a fewer weeks-long pata, which almost ended with the necessity to conduct earlier elections in the voivodship.
Farsa in Małopolska one more time opened a bag of speculations about the “end of the PiS”, or at least the end of the full power of Jarosław Kaczyński in the party. no of these ends materialized during the 2023–2024 season. Kaczyński had to step down on Kmita, but the faction is presently pacifying And her people go to the media. leaksthat the erstwhile Prime Minister may even be cut off from the Law and Justice authorities in the next hand. According to voices from inside the party, "everything depends on how much Kaczyński got angry at Szydło for what happened in Krakow".
PIS by polling average Poll of Polls since the elections in October lost 5 percent points of support. But it inactive didn't go below 30 percent. And even though, after October 15, it not only radicalized the message, but besides completely gave up the function of substantive opposition – leaving this field of the Confederate from 1 and the Left side.
Since the losses of the PiS elections, and especially its leader, he repeats over and over again that Donald Tusk's government is implementing a German agenda in Poland, he has been "installed here" to agree to the abolition of Polish statehood through reforms of the EU treaties, and in addition seeks to "eliminate the opposition", to pacify any protest against these evil plans. This kind of paranoid message can only scope the most ideologicalized voters, and it is truly amazing that based on it fundamentally all its policy, the Law and Justice organization is inactive able to keep support at an average level of 30%.
Cutting the grant will hit Kaczyński's power in the party
Soon, however, the Law and Justice can face serious problems. All thanks to the decisions of the PCW on financial statements and what is more crucial, grants to the parties. What happens if the committee takes most of her grant?
The Law and Justice will, of course, fight to revoke this decision in courts. This fight will be even more radical. After the first conviction of Kamiński and Wąsik, the formation politicians felt that it had been unfairly treated, that the another organization had broken an unwritten regulation “we are calling ourselves out to thieves, agents and traitors, but we are not going to prison.” The cut-off of most grants will be perceived as a akin violation of an unwritten contract, as a signal that the current power wants to destruct the Law and, in combating this threat, all grabs are allowed.
Of course, besides PiS must realize that the run in 2023, but besides in 2020, was not equal, that power beyond all the rules and not counting the simple sense of embarrassment, utilized for the run a state camera, sometimes so impudencefully that it was easy to catch her hand – which may be a case of employees of the Government Legislative Center, to do as part of the authoritative run to Minister Szczucki. However, there is simply a belief on the right hand of Pisa that all power is doing the same, and even if the Law and Justice have overreacted, the reaction of the present authorities is disproportionate and hypocritical.
The PiS fighting for the grant will so attack the Platform even more, shouting for “the Tusk regime”, which tries to “destroy the right hand in Poland”. This rhetoric may temporarily revolve around the PiS of his sympathizers, or even get them to contribute to the presidential campaign, as did the acts of censorship of Prime Minister Gliński prompted individuals on the another side of political dispute to contributions to initiatives that are thus set up.
Even if this is the way to fund the presidential candidate's campaign, it is impossible to keep a large organization in the long run, based on the micropayments of sympathizers. Not erstwhile the others have stable, millions of PLN per year funding. Losing a grant would mean the most serious, existential problem for the Law and Justice, possibly the largest since the formation.
Cutting the grant would besides importantly weaken Kaczyński's position in the Law and on the widely understood right. Empty accounts will verify how much the organization is actually a Kaczyński sect, ready to follow it into the desert and wait there for better times.
The right side of the political scene has for years been surviving in the future conflict for a "schede after Kaczyński", to which many politicians are preparing, dreaming of power over the camp, which united the current leader of the PiS, but incapable to challenge the president and force him to surrender power. And that Kaczyński seems incapable to real transfer power in the organization and go to political retirement, the possible of this conflict for a scheda is constantly shifting over time.
‘Scheda after Kaczyński’, however, mostly means control of the money from the grant of the organization built by it and the structures maintained by it. erstwhile the president does not have organization money to hand out – for election fund and another essential expenses in politics – his position in the organization may change significantly. It is possible that abruptly there will be more and more voices doubting the political designation of the “great strategist”, his ideas for the right hand and the diagnosis of the planet around us. Especially after the losing presidential election.
It's going to be hard to repeat the Duda maneuver.
And everything points to the fact that PiS is going to be very hard to win. The commentators claimed the same in August 2014, wondering with what advantage Bronisław Komorowski would win in the first round. Meanwhile, fewer of whom known at the time erstwhile his candidacy was announced, Andrzej Duda, managed to defeat the Platform candidate.
However, what was successful in 2015 does not necessarily gotta win in 2025. In 2015, the vote against Komorowski was the first chance to show PO a yellow card since the 2011 parliamentary election, after 8 years of the party's rule. In 2025 we will be after 10 years of the president's regulation from the Law and Justice and a year and a half of continuous conflict between the head of state and the coalition government on October 15 – so emotions will be completely different than 10 years earlier. Coalition leaders on October 15 may be able to mobilize voters to yet complete the removal of the Law and Justice from power.
This mobilization may work, especially if the Law and Justice Office is betting on individual associated with the 2015–2023 period of government, specified as Mateusz Morawiecki. Kaczyński is aware of this, so for now he is betting on another variant: creating from scratch a practically unknown candidate from a further series of Law and Justices. In this context, politicians specified as the future president of Warsaw Tobias Bocheński, MP and erstwhile Provincial of West Pomerania Zbigniew Bogucki or president of IPN Karol Nawrocki are mentioned most often.
The problem with unknown candidates, however, is that we do not know how they will manage in a long, hard campaign, where you gotta work under pressure, giving 200 percent of yourself for a fewer months, go to hostile media, participate in debates, drive around Poland, meet people in markets in Koński, Nowy Tomyśl, Białogard, Krapkowice or Dąbrowa Tarnowska.
By betting on a candidate who theoretically manages well in investigation and performs well in the media – in this last competition he is definitely distinguished by MP Bogucki – you can take a very long ride erstwhile it comes time to verify specified a choice in run combat conditions.
The Law and Justice Office is so likely to neglect in the presidential elections, and that these elections frequently have an incomparably greater political importance in Poland than the real power of the President, which may be a catalyst for further adverse trends for parties: decline in support, interior conflicts, weakening of leadership, centrifugal movements.
Problem of Indulgence
On the another hand, as in the 2023–2024 season, the opposition of the PiS in the opposition may prove to be greater than it seems to the commentators and political opponents of the party, so even with a limited subsidy and after the losing presidential election, the PiS may drift to the next election without major shocks with support not falling below 25–27%.
That evidently doesn't give him a chance to power. But as fresh elections have shown, she's not even guaranteed victory. The biggest problem with the Law and Justice is that, while playing for self-government, it became a “unattachable” party, devoid of coalition capacity. For electorates, possible coalitions from PSL and Poland 2050 PiS is an anti-democratic, populist force, not a average part of the political scenery with which pragmatic alliances can be formed. Confederate voters may not be bothered by this patch, but Bosak and Mentzen remember how the erstwhile Kaczyński coalitions – Jarosław Gowin and Andrzej Lepper.
As long as the Law and Justice can't deal with the problem of indulgence, he may not return to power. At the same time, it is hard to imagine that it will be able to cope with it if the organization is actually directed by Jarosław Kaczyński. And there's no indication that he would always stop. due to the fact that even if the organization officially entrusts key functions – even this president – to new, representing the younger generation to politicians, as they say, Media leaksThis fresh board would inactive be in charge of the old PC chairman's guard. Generational change is either made in the organization or not, it cannot be done in half a whistle, as the Law and Justice are considering today. Nobody's gonna fall for the apparent change in leadership.
While in the short term, in the position of the 2023–2024 season, the biggest problems of the organization may be a grant and presidential election, the key question in the position of the next parliamentary election is: how to halt being an incorruptible organization and how is it possible with Kaczyński, standing, even informally, at the head of the formation? For now, the PiS seems to have no good answers to this dilemma.
