Several countries around the world held elections over the weekend. However, attention has been paid to Poland where a center-right party has taken control.
In Poland, conservatives are coming out victorious. The eurosceptic Law and Justice Party, led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, won, while Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz has been defeated.
The Law and Justice Party, while fiscally liberal, is known for its far-right social policies that verge on xenophobia. University of Michigan Professor Brian Porter-Szucs wrote in The Conversation that the party “is opposed to immigrants, gays, feminists, liberals, and in general all ‘foreigners.'” Nationalism has been on the rise in the European Union as the economy has been slow to recover and immigrants are given the blame by politicians. Anti-immigrant resentment has been fed over the past five years.
“We have won because we have been consistent in facing all the challenges ahead of us and we followed in the footsteps of the late President Lech Kaczynski,” Beata Szydlo, a Prime Minister candidate had said. “We wouldn’t have won had it not been for the Polish people who told us about their expectations and needs, and who in the end voted for us.”
This will be the first time since 1989 that a single party has gained enough votes to govern alone.
“We will exert law but there will be no taking of revenge. There will be no squaring of personal accounts, there will be no kicking of those who have fallen through their own fault and very rightly so.” said Kaczynski.