Poland’s populist Law and Justice party has lost a confidence vote to end its eight-year authoritarian rule, paving the way for Donald Tusk to take over the country’s leadership this week.
The party, known by the acronym PiS, fell well short of a parliamentary majority in October’s general election but had spent two months trying in vain to form a coalition that could keep it in power.
Monday’s vote along party lines brought that process to a close, ending an era of PiS rule that had alarmed international bodies and sharply divided Polish society.
The centrist Tusk, who secured a clear path to power in October, will now finally be able to formalise his coalition. He is expected to be sworn in as prime minister in a matter of hours and then put his coalition to a confidence vote later this week, which he is almost certain to win.
PiS had orchestrated an illiberal transformation of Poland since coming to power in 2015, taking greater control of the country’s judiciary, public media, cultural institutions and businesses, and cracking down on the rights of migrants, women and LGBTQ+ people.
But it failed to win an unprecedented third term in October’s election, in a vote dominated by the cost of living, the war in Ukraine and Poland’s place in Europe.
PiS did win more seats than any other single party, and the country’s PiS-allied president, Andrzej Duda, gave the party every chance of forming a government, despite all other groups insisting they would not agree to govern alongside it.
Tusk, who served two terms as Poland’s prime minister from 2007 – and then became EU president for five years – will now try to undo the consequences of PiS’s transformation of the Polish state.
But he will have to contend with a president and court system that favour the former ruling party, as well as a diverse coalition of lawmakers from the left to the centre-right.