There are countries that carry universal trends before they go beyond their borders. For the best or for the worst.
Example: Italy — a great country of modern trade unionism, industrial design or cinema — created fascism in the 20th century, before Germany and its ultra-racist variant, which then spread elsewhere in the world.
Seventy years after Mussolini, Italy was still creating at the end of the 20th centurye century one of the major political forms of the 21ste. With Silvio Berlusconi in 1994, she brought to the forefront the archetype of “the ignorant businessman-media character-demagogue”… twenty years before Donald Trump.
Poland is another of these pioneering countries whose political adventures we would be well advised to follow. In 1956, it was — with Hungary — at the forefront of protest against Soviet totalitarianism, in a movement that foreshadowed the Prague Spring of 1968.
Later, in 1980-1981, the Solidarity movement laid the foundations for a tidal wave that would sweep away the Soviet empire and its Eastern European base. In 1989, in the same country, a democracy was born on the ruins of the post-Stalinist heritage. Two and a half years later, in December 1991, Eastern Europe was liberated and the Soviet Union disappeared.
A rule of law and political pluralism would emerge ex nihilomodern miracle.
But in the 2010s, Poland’s democratic revolution turned sour. This time, the evil does not come from neighboring imperialism, but from internal sources.
For eight years, elected then re-elected following regular elections, in a country politically divided in two, the regime of the Law and Justice (PiS) party of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, armed with an ultranationalist, Catholic and reactionary ideology, was going to invest systematically the State and modify its structure.
The high courts of justice, national education, the major media – public television which had become a caricature of crude propaganda, worse than in the communist era – were going to be put at the service of a narrow, “holistic” conception of national identity.
A country where the division of powers was becoming increasingly tenuous… and where the “pawns” of PiS occupied all the important positions. To the point of prompting procedures from the European Commission for “undermining the rule of law”, in a context of incessant guerrilla warfare between Warsaw and Brussels.
Finally, after two mandates on the edge of 50%, in a context where we continue (despite everything else) to count votes correctly on election day, a sufficient proportion of the electorate has changed course.
In the October legislative elections, a liberal and pro-European coalition, led by former prime minister and ex-president of the European Council Donald Tusk, overthrew the PiS majority.
But to say that this liberal coalition has “taken power” would be an exaggeration. Because the “PiS State” is hanging on and selling its skin dearly. For three months, he has been leading a constant guerrilla war, with a hysterical tone, against the “regime of communist atheists sold to Germany”.
A very recent episode illustrates the ferocity of this confrontation. On January 9, the outgoing Minister of the Interior and one of his relatives were arrested by the police in the grounds of the presidential palace… where they had believed (in vain) to be able to go “to take refuge” from the mandate of justice against them!
In cases dating back several years, they were convicted of abuse of power and illegal spying on political rivals, before being pardoned by President Andrzej Duda… and then being convicted again.
However, Duda – whose mandate still has 17 months left – is close to Kaczynski, very inclined to follow the directives of the “boss”… As such, he is one of the “axes of resistance” against the Tusk government . With his power of pardon, his right of veto on legislation… and also the sword of Damocles of dissolving the chambers, this man can sabotage and paralyze the political process.
Conversely, the new government – which has taken on a sacred mission, that, he says, of “restoring the rule of law” – has a heavy hand. The brutal dismissal, by decree, of the television authorities the day after his election, going so far as to dissolve the structure of the organization, aroused criticism, even among his liberal friends.
Accused of using methods bordering on legality, as brutal as those of his predecessors, Tusk replied that he had no choice: it takes, he said, an “iron broom to clean the State-PiS”.
Real dilemma: can we reestablish the rule of law – undeniably injured in Poland – in this way?
More broadly, Poland has become in 2024 a beautiful test of universal value: with authoritarians and tyrants having the wind in their sails almost everywhere, the reestablishment of the rule of law after an experience of “illiberal democracy” is is it possible… without breaking eggs? By the way, what would the United States look like after a second term of Donald Trump?
For all these reasons, it will be very instructive to follow what happens this year in Warsaw.
François Brousseau is an international affairs columnist at Ici Radio-Canada. [email protected]