Five key lessons learned from the local electionsFive key lessons learned from the local elections. "You can see this fear in the eyes of Tusk and others".

The second round of local elections at the level of the larger (former provincial and current provincial) cities brought no change. Battered by the results to the provincial councils, Tusk is declaring triumph. But this is hardly the true and full picture. Here are the five most important conclusions after the April political battle.

Firstly, the results of the elections to the voivodship councils and within the smaller localities gave Law and Justice the oxygen, the necessary base to maintain its political position, to survive. Events did not unfold as planned in Berlin: The Law and Justice Party is not falling apart, the Law and Justice Party is not sliding down the slope, the Law and Justice Party has survived and has the resources to continue the fight. The wave of the 13 December coalition has been stopped! The bonuses for seizing power are gone! Even if a hundred editors were thrown into action, driven into the TV studios in police cars, this obvious and very important consequence will not be erased.

Secondly, also quite a few of the large centres of PiS were closer than anyone thought. The residents of Rzeszów, Poznań, Elbląg and many other cities had a real choice; the incumbent mayors were forced into fierce competition. Again: from the perspective of 15 October 2023, PiS had no right to get this far. If these people get and use the opportunities to continue working, things could be different in five years’ time.

For it is impossible to win without professional, sustained work, accumulating knowledge and data about the area of political competition, about modern communication. But it is also impossible to win without calling a spade a spade, without fighting back, without challenging your opponent hard; especially one so firmly entrenched in his positions. Those who, after the parliamentary elections, thought that it was enough to be nice and cool to win against the machinery of the Third Republic camp, after the local elections should already know how wrong they were. Because this campaign on a nationwide level was done for PiS by the actions „100 lies instead of 100 concretes” and „they cheated in government, they will cheat in local government”, not by some warm „ble, ble”. And that was the third conclusion.

Fourthly, the 13 December Coalition is losing its ability to mobilise its turnout. Once, after eight years of running a hegemony against Law and Justice through a powerful media machine, using German and Brussels support, it succeeded in fooling millions of Poles. It will not succeed a second time at this scale. They rallied, they invaded, they babbled about the necessity of politically hammering Law and Justice - they didn’t, nobody listened to them. This is only natural, by the way, because how many times can the young be fooled into buying a student dormitory for one zloty, entrepreneurs into accepting voluntary social insurance, drivers into buying fuel for 5.19 each? No authority has ever so soon after an election become, in the eyes of ordinary people, a company of such brazen crooks. This power is afraid of this truth; you can see this fear in the eyes of Tusk and others.

Fifth, it was clear that Law and Justice is the only political force that has a positive, developmental, ambitious proposal for Poland and the Poles, while Tusk’s hollowness resounds ever more strongly. His team and he himself already seem to be tired and annoyed by questions about plans, projects, and actions a few months after taking power. This will get them caught up. One can risk the thesis that the pro-Polish camp, led by Jarosław Kaczyński, can win the European elections high and seriously fight to win the presidential elections. It has its potential. But it also has shortcomings that it won’t succeed without correcting. It needs to be more professional, it needs to reward only diligence and efficiency.