This is a very worrying development made worse by the EU's apparent institutional impotence to be able to do anything about it. Add this to the already long list of crappy 2020 developments...
Seen from a Danish perspective it's sad that one of your neigbouring countries chooses the iliberal path. Many Danes, me included, work with Poles on a daily basis, but this election might spell the beginning of the end of such fruitful cooperation. Around one percent of the Danish population is Polish and it worries me that PiS could be spreading anti-semitic conspiracies and authoritarian ideas amongst my fellow countrymen.
Addendum - the Opposition needs to take heart from the narrow loss and begin campaigning for the next election, appealing to hope, highlighting the government’s failures and weaknesses. As Yascha says in the article, ‘(o)ver the next three years, demographic changes are likely to favor the opposition’. A disciplined and united Opposition can assist ‘the precarious balance of public opinion shift(ing) against the government’, so that the vote at the next election cannot be anything but ‘free and fair’. The worst thing the Opposition could do or become is as illiberal as the Government
PiS is wasting no time and they’ve already mentioned they’ll be working towards expanding the number of voting districts from 41 to 100. This aims at eliminating smaller parties, as simulations shows PiS (and PO) would gain many seats while smaller parties would be limited to 1 seat tops. This is a gamble, though, because the same play in the Senate made all opposition parties create one common list, thanks to which they hold a narrow majority.
A disappointing result indeed, confirming a trajectory that does not bode well for Europe. As an aside, I’ve just finished listening to Yascha’s interview with Ezra and I was really surprised to hear such raw emotion in Ezra’s voice. He was clearly worked up and had confused the reason for a community such as this one, namely, the need for due process, natural justice - the need for reasonableness and proportionality in response to inadvertent mistakes, or ill-informed statements / actions
This is a very worrying development made worse by the EU's apparent institutional impotence to be able to do anything about it. Add this to the already long list of crappy 2020 developments...
Seen from a Danish perspective it's sad that one of your neigbouring countries chooses the iliberal path. Many Danes, me included, work with Poles on a daily basis, but this election might spell the beginning of the end of such fruitful cooperation. Around one percent of the Danish population is Polish and it worries me that PiS could be spreading anti-semitic conspiracies and authoritarian ideas amongst my fellow countrymen.
Addendum - the Opposition needs to take heart from the narrow loss and begin campaigning for the next election, appealing to hope, highlighting the government’s failures and weaknesses. As Yascha says in the article, ‘(o)ver the next three years, demographic changes are likely to favor the opposition’. A disciplined and united Opposition can assist ‘the precarious balance of public opinion shift(ing) against the government’, so that the vote at the next election cannot be anything but ‘free and fair’. The worst thing the Opposition could do or become is as illiberal as the Government
PiS is wasting no time and they’ve already mentioned they’ll be working towards expanding the number of voting districts from 41 to 100. This aims at eliminating smaller parties, as simulations shows PiS (and PO) would gain many seats while smaller parties would be limited to 1 seat tops. This is a gamble, though, because the same play in the Senate made all opposition parties create one common list, thanks to which they hold a narrow majority.
A disappointing result indeed, confirming a trajectory that does not bode well for Europe. As an aside, I’ve just finished listening to Yascha’s interview with Ezra and I was really surprised to hear such raw emotion in Ezra’s voice. He was clearly worked up and had confused the reason for a community such as this one, namely, the need for due process, natural justice - the need for reasonableness and proportionality in response to inadvertent mistakes, or ill-informed statements / actions