half a million people demonstrate in Warsaw against the government

A large gathering a few months before the legislative elections this fall. Half a million Poles took to the streets of Warsaw on Sunday, June 4, to demonstrate against the populist nationalist government in power. “The town hall considers [la participation] at 500,000 right now”said Jan Grabiec, spokesman for the march organizers, to AFP.

Coming from all over Poland, the demonstrators responded to the call of Donald Tusk, former head of the European Council and head of the main centrist opposition party. They marched against “expensive living, fraud and lies, in favor of democracy, free elections and the EU”.

“We don’t want an authoritarian Poland”

Leaders of most opposition parties encouraged their supporters to join this march against the ruling populist nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party. “We don’t want an authoritarian Poland”, “The PiS is the dear life”could be read on placards directed against the majority.

Present at the demonstration, the leader of the first free trade union in the communist world in the 1980s, Lech Walesa, declared to wait for “patiently” the day when the nationalist party and its leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski will have to leave power.