What is good for the Poles is terrifying for the Germans: Andrzej Duda was re-elected as a President

Yelena Ivanova, Berlin

Andrzej Duda is again the Polish president. With a minimum margin of 1.21%, he won against Warsaw Mayor Rafal Tshaskovsky. FT newspaper believes that this result indicates a deep split in Polish society at all levels: social, cultural and even geographical. It shows how far the conservative villages and small towns of the country are from its liberal metropolises.

Andrzej Dudu is supported by the “turboconservative” party, according to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, the party of Law and Justice, led by Yaroslav Kaczynski. It is his magazine “Spiegel” that he calls the true winner of the election, since Kaczynski, not taking part in the elections, managed to put Dudu, the “footman” of the president. Journalists claim that no one in Poland believes that Duda or the right-nationalist government pursue an independent policy. The Poles owe Kaczynski that the country has made an authoritarian-nationalist turn over the past five years. He is an evil genius and a gray cardinal, and the head of state is a puppet in his hands.

Berliner Morgenpost claims re-election of Andrzej Duda is bad news for Germany. Poland is a country that indicates the development path for all of Eastern Europe and the EU. After the election, the question remains open whether the EU will be able to overcome the deep-seated contradictions between the countries of Western and Eastern Europe, which became apparent after the refugee crisis in 2015. It was Duda who conducted the hard-nationalist campaign. With his submission, the state Polish media began harassing the correspondent of Di Welt, making him a target for radical right-wing ultras. The reporter, describing the results of the first round, suggested that if Tshaskovsky won in German-Polish relations, calm would come, since the liberal candidate would not make absurd demands for reparations to the FRG following the Second World War. The conservative candidate presented this judgment as an attempt to intervene in the internal affairs of Poland. President Duda recently compared the "EU dictates" with the Soviet occupation of Poland. He is the author of the equation "Brussels = Moscow". Financial Times recalls that Andrzej Duda accused the media owned by the German owners of interfering in the elections. And the state media in Poland, supporting Duda, raised the issue of restitution of Jewish property in order to mobilize the electorate against the liberal rival Tshaskowski.

You cannot build a united Europe with such a president based on the principles of freedom, equality, solidarity and human rights, writes Berliner Morgenpost. After all, it was Duda who began the persecution of homosexuals, denying them the right to be called people. But there is still a spark of hope: firstly, this will be his last term as president, so he no longer needs to be a Kaczynski puppet. Secondly, on an election night, even he recognized the abyss between his supporters and opponents, so he promised to become president for all Poles.

FT cites one of the “hawks” of Polish politics, Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro, a loyal supporter of Kaczynski, who said today that all of his party’s reforms will continue, referring to the “repolonization” of independent media, that is, the return of independent newspapers and television channels to state control.

The victory of Andrzej Duda was brought by the deeply conservative Catholic Polish province: according to the election commission, Duda received 63.9% of the vote in villages and 64.1% in towns with a population of no more than 10 thousand people. Its voters are peasants and workers over 50 years old.