why is a referendum organized on the same day as the legislative elections? – The Express

And to accompany these elections, the Polish government organized a series of referendums on the same day. Coincidence of the calendar? Not really… The four questions chosen by the majority seem to have the sole objective of galvanizing the popularity of the party led by the former Prime Minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski. But the latter assures us: these subjects are important for the future of Poland and the lives of its citizens.

PiS wants Poles to answer four questions: do they want to “sell off state assets by selling them to foreign entities”?, do they support “a possible increase in the retirement age”?, want -they “remove the barrier on the border with Belarus”?, and are they in favor of “the admission of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa, in accordance with the mechanism of forced relocation imposed by the bureaucracy European”?

All the questions aim to weaken the camp of Donald Tusk, former Prime Minister and President of the European Council. The 66-year-old is also the leader of the main opposition party, the Civic Coalition. The latter is distinguished by pro-European positions where the Polish government, although Atlanticist, shows a broad distrust of the Twenty-Seven club.

Concerning the referendum, the opposition camp sees it as a “manipulation” of the elections. Donald Tusk calls on voters to boycott him. “I solemnly declare this referendum null and void. It is invalid in the deepest and broadest sense of the term,” he declared in August. “This campaign is the most violent we have seen in thirty years,” Anna Paczesniak, professor at the department of European studies at the University of Wroclaw, recently said in the columns of L’Express.

Through this referendum, the current conservative government is playing on the record of its opponent and does not hesitate to stir up the fears of the population. Using, for example, the retirement argument. When he was head of government, Donald Tusk raised the retirement age from 65 to 67 for men, and from 60 to 67 for women. The reform, intended to last until 2040, was canceled by Law and Justice when it came to power in 2016.

To motivate voters to go to the polls, two referendums on immigration are also planned with two more tendentious questions. Like the one on maintaining the wall in Belarus. As of November 2021, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia have faced the arrival of migrants from the Middle East and Africa across their borders with Belarus, amid a serious deterioration in relations between Minsk and Brussels.

Poland then decided to close its doors and build a wall. On June 20, 2022, the government finished erecting a fence on the Polish-Belarusian border. It is a 5.5 meter high device, topped with barbed wire and which extends over 187 of the 418 kilometers of border shared with Belarus. A way for the national conservatives in power to respond to what they described as a “hybrid war” orchestrated last summer by the neighboring leader, Alexander Lukashenko.

With the war in Ukraine, Poland also found itself on the front line in welcoming refugees. In total, Warsaw hosted 1.5 million refugees. In terms of number of refugees per 1,000 inhabitants, Estonia (50.49%) and the Czech Republic (46.58%), followed by Poland (41.52%), have the highest ratios of Ukrainian refugees. , again according to UNHCR figures. The Poles will also be asked to vote on the European project for the relocation of migrants within the EU. This distribution mechanism – in which EU countries would have to participate under penalty of “financial penalties” – was strongly rejected at the beginning of October by Hungary, Slovakia and Poland.

In addition to securing popular support, the referendum has another advantage: it is also treated separately from elections under campaign finance laws, allowing the ruling party to increase its spending before the vote, notes the American media Politico. “It’s just another method of appropriating public funds to finance an electoral campaign without any limits,” Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bąk, an MP from the left-wing opposition party, told private channel Polsat in August. News. Comments taken up by the American media.

And this is not the first time that this referendum strategy has been used in Poland to hope to emerge victorious in an election. In 2015, President Bronisław Komorowski attempted to revive the dynamic around his campaign by proposing a referendum on the financing of political parties and the introduction of a first-past-the-post electoral system. But only 7% of Poles participated in the referendum. A serious setback for the former head of state, who will eventually be defeated.