The fresh Left's Sunday National Council did not bring a surprise: as previously announced by Insight Policy, the party's candidate in the presidential election was the Vice Marshal of the legislature and was co-chaired by Magdalena Biejat.
It's a common sense, safe choice. The organization will not fight for a second circular and it is very possible that it will gotta settle for a 4th or even 5th place. At the same time, he cannot let go of the fight due to the fact that voters would take it as a white flag hanging. He must usage the elections to advance the organization and its demands by gathering a left-wing electorate around them.
Left-wing ABC in the safety framework
On Sunday, speaking for the first time as fresh Left candidate, Biejat presented left-wing ABCs. She focused on housing, credit prices, excessive bank margins. She promised that if she became president, she would usage her legislative initiative to solve these problems.
Social demands were presented not in the language of class conflict, but in the aspirations of the mediate class. She argued that since we have had specified a large economical success as a state in the last 30 years, we can yet afford to start implementing social policies in Poland, which have long been a standard in countries that we are beginning to match in terms of wealth.
She didn't forget the subject of security. She proposed to the another candidates to sign a pact guaranteeing the current level of defence spending. At the same time, she sought to present a different way of reasoning about safety, going beyond purely military issues, paying attention to resilience, the cohesion of society and that, in addition to cannons, it had a functioning network of hospitals or well organized civil defence.
As before the Sunday National Council She wrote In Oko.press Agata Szczęsniak, Biejat run is to be built around topics specified as housing, unfair practices of debt companies, driving customers into hard debts, safety and work, specifically the right to rest.
Will the Warsaw “girl from the neighbourhood” scope the mediate cities?
Another possible subject of the run was pointed out by Krzysztof Kukucki speaking before Biejat. president Włocławka called for medium-sized cities, especially the capitals of the old Grykowski voivodships, which after the government improvement of Buzek for the last 4th of a century developed "with handbrake pulled".
Kukucki, without mentioning the names, stuck a pin in Trzaskowski as a candidate who only remembered the mediate cities for the election, not being able to offer anything to suit their needs. These needs, as he argued, know and can meet the fresh Left.
The erstwhile provincial capitals—especially in the north and west of the country—were the bastions of the left over the years. Since the 2019 election, her electorate has moved to a more large city pole. If NL is reasoning about expanding it, then cities specified as Włocławek, Słupsk, Koszalin or Legnica are the first natural field for this.
Will Biejat scope voters from smaller towns? Krzysztof Gawkowski, the beginning Sunday presentation of the candidate, presented the senator, and previously the MP from Warsaw as a “girl from the neighbourhood”, opposing her 2 men: 1 “from the palace” – could be about Andrzej Duda as well as the 1 in office at the Warsaw town hall Rafał Trzaskowski – and the another “from the gym” – i.e. “citizen candidate“ PiS.
The Biejat run will surely emphasise that she is the only female in the male-dominated group, hoping to mobilise this leftist and progressive electoral. It is more interesting whether and how the “neighborhood” of a politician will be told – will it be possible to show it as individual we meet in a playground, on a market, on a tram halt and in another neighbouring spaces? And will this “neighborly” image work outside the neighborhoods of the largest metropolises?
Three problems Biejat
In 2019, unknown outside the narrow Warsaw NGO, Biejat amazed everyone with a great, bottom-up run to the Sejm, taking the 3rd mandate for the left in the Warsaw district. Starting 4th place, she made a second score on the list. In this year's presidential election in the capital, she competed against a very hard competitor, which for all left-wing candidate is Trzaskowski, won 12.86 percent – more than any left-wing candidate in this race since Wojciech Olejniczak in 2010.
Now the Vice Marshal of the legislature is facing a much more hard task. There are 3 major obstacles to her campaign. The first is the demobilization of left-wing electorate and groups in which the left could search support, like young women. It can be assumed that the main origin is disillusionment with the tiny origin of the left in the government and its not sufficiently progressive agenda.
On Sunday, Biejat called for the mobilisation of trade unions, activists, NGOs – full left-wing civilian society. Speaking before her Prime Minister Gawkowski and Minister Agnieszka Dziemianovich-Bąk They praised the successes of the Left in the government. However, this may not be adequate to overcome the discouragement and apathy of voters.
The second problem is the possible piston on the left. The Together Party, if it wants to show that it is serious, crucial in adult politics by force, must besides present a candidate or candidate in the presidential election. Piotr Szumlewicz – the leader of the Union alternate and left commentator – and the Labour Union Senator Waldemar Witkowski besides announced the start on the left. If all of us manage to collect 100,000 signatures – which is not certain – then 4 people will fight for a tiny left-wing cake.
The rivalry of Biejat with the individual displayed by the Together can be peculiarly harsh. If it were Adrian Zandberg, the duo would face each another erstwhile jointly leading the organization Together. For the part of the combined action – as you can see on the X portal – Biejat is simply a “traitor” who crashed the organization in exchange for the chance to run in the presidential election with support of the fresh Left.
Finally, the last, most serious problem of Biejat: Rafał Trzaskowski. For a large part of the overall progressive electorate, and for specified a fight must be fought by the fresh Left candidate – he is simply an appropriate candidate, representing a sufficiently progressive variant of the liberal center, so that no left-hand alternate is needed. Biejat must convince this group why it is not worth giving Trzaskowski support already in the first round, and keep with him as many voters as possible who supported the left on October 15, 2024.
Left Rates
The presidential elections in Poland have frequently changed the dynamics of the political scene, triggering forces forming it over the next years. Klęska Krzaklewski in 2000 announced the end of the run Solidarity, and Olechowski's second place opened the way to the creation of the PO. Komorowski's defeat in 2015 began an eight-year period of PiS dominance in Polish politics.
The left in the last 2 presidential votes recorded a score of 2 percent with a fraction. If this happens again for the 3rd time in a row, it will deepen the impression of the problem of left-wing formation and may discourage further voters and trigger interior decomposition processes.
However, if Biejat manages to get a consequence akin to that from the parliamentary election, fresh Left will show that it has its own electorate, which KO cannot swallow so easily. If, by the way, the support of the candidate could be pushed to 1–1.5 percent – or if the Together, most possibly, did not collect signatures – NL would show that there is no life on the left. The decent consequence of Biejat in the first circular would let to request something from coalition partners in government in exchange for support. If Trzaskowski wins, Biejat would make her a natural candidate in the subsequent Warsaw elections.
The vice-marshal of the legislature so has a considerable responsibility. The left-wing sympathizers fear the 2015 and 2020 replays, which paradoxically can give the candidate any intellectual comfort – even objectively weak, but uncompromising consequence will be considered a comparative success.
