Centre-right victory heralds a new era in Warsaw

Poland’s Catholic bishops have reacted cautiously to Sunday’s election landslide by the centre-right Law and Justice party, which is expected to strengthen the Church’s role in public affairs.

“I expect [the new government to] work for the common good – elections are supposed to make this possible in key areas such as health, education and our role in Europe and the world,” said Archbishop Wojciech Polak of Gniezno, Poland’s Catholic Primate. “All of this will provide an important basis for work by the new parliament.”

The church leader spoke after Law and Justice secured 38 per cent of votes in the parliamentary ballot, defeating the liberal Civic Platform which gained 24 per cent after eight years in government. Cardinal Kazimierz Nycz of Warsaw said he believed Polish voters had sensed the importance of the latest “festival of democracy”, which would enable citizens to “place power over the future in good hands”.

Law and Justice, led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, won on a platform that included higher welfare spending and tax breaks for the less well-off, and was shown in opinion surveys to have attracted support from Poland’s poor rural areas less affected by recent economic successes. Its premier-designate, Beata Szydlo, said she hoped the party’s outright majority of 235 seats in the 460-seat Sejm would enable it to be the first to govern alone since the 1989 collapse of communism.

Poland’s Catholic Tygodnik Powszechny weekly said the party’s win, soon after the May election of centre-right President Andrzej Duda, had placed it in a “comfortable situation” to follow through on pledges including constitutional changes.

A senior Catholic presenter with Polish Radio told The Tablet that the “strong popular vote” for Law and Justice, which opposes abortion, in vitro fertilisation and same-sex partnerships, would “greatly please” the Church.