They are protesting against “expensive living, cheating and lying, in favor of democracy, free elections and the European Union”. Half a million Poles took to the streets of Warsaw on Sunday June 4 to demonstrate against the populist nationalist government in power, a few months before the legislative elections, the organizers announced, citing the city authorities. The procession appears to be the largest the country has seen since the fall of communism in 1989.
Coming from all over Poland, the demonstrators – wearing the Polish colors, white and red, and those of the European Union – responded to the call of the leader of the main opposition party, centrist, (Civic Platform, PO ), former head of the European Council Donald Tusk.
Leaders of the majority of opposition parties have encouraged their supporters to join the big march against the populist nationalist ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, its leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski and his allies. ” That’s enough ! “, “We do not want an authoritarian Poland”, “The PiS is the dear life”, shouted placards directed against the majority in power in Poland for almost eight years, in the run-up to the legislative elections scheduled for autumn.
“We came to get you”
With white and red hearts glued to their chests, PO officials led the way, accompanied by the legendary leader of the first free trade union in the communist world in the 1980s, Lech Walesa, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1983.
In a brief inaugural address, Tusk stressed that the opposition’s mission is “comparable in importance” to that of the 1980s and the fight against communism at the time. Long absent from the political scene, Mr. Walesa said he had waited “patiently” for the day when the Nationalist Party and its leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski had to go. “Mr. Kaczynski, we came to get you. That day has arrived,” Mr. Walesa said.
The date of the protest, which the opposition sees as a watershed moment in its march to an eventual election victory, is the 34th anniversary of Poland’s first partially free elections, which precipitated the fall of communism in Europe.
Lech Walesa’s movement had then succeeded in placing 160 of its candidates in the Lower House, thus winning almost all the seats it could claim, i.e. 35% of the mandates of this assembly, and 99% of all the positions. of senators.