Poland holds high-stakes election amid rows over democratic rule
World
Poland holds high-stakes election amid rows over democratic rule
WARSAW (Reuters) - Poles vote on Sunday in a parliamentary election the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) hopes will earn it an unprecedented third term in office, while the opposition warns it could put the country on a path towards leaving the European Union.
Opinion polls suggest PiS will come out ahead but could lose its majority amid intensifying discontent over its democratic record, which has cost Poland billions of euros in EU aid, and concerns over women's rights and the cost of living.
With war raging in neighbouring Ukraine and a migrant crisis brewing, the EU and Washington are watching the vote closely, although both PiS and its mainstream opposition support NATO-member Poland's key role in providing military and logistical support to Kyiv.
PiS has cast the election as a choice between security from unfettered migration, which it says its opponents support, and a creeping westernisation it sees as contrary to Poland's Catholic character.
"This election will show whether Poland will be governed by Poles, or by Berlin or Brussels," PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski told supporters at the party's last campaign rally on Friday.
"What will win is good, patriotic governance ... not the screaming and hatred that fill the media and which affect weaker minds," he said in Skarzysko Kamienna, a city in the PiS heartland in southeastern Poland.
Since sweeping to power in 2015, the party has been accused of undermining democratic checks and balances, politicising the courts, using publicly owned media to push its own propaganda, and stirring up homophobia.
PiS denies wrongdoing, or wanting to leave the EU, and says its reforms aim to make the country and its economy more fair while removing the last vestiges of communism. It has built its support on generous social handouts, which it says rival parties will stop.
Its main rival, the liberal Civic Coalition (KO), led by former European Council president Donald Tusk, has campaigned on a pledge to undo PiS reforms, hold its leaders to account and resolve conflicts with Brussels over democratic rule. Tusk says his party would maintain social support.
