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Poland’s main opposition party filled the streets of central Warsaw on Sunday with a rally that aimed to galvanise voters ahead of fiercely contested parliamentary elections in two weeks’ time.
Donald Tusk, leader of the opposition Civic Platform party and a former prime minister, pledged to reunite the country as he seeks to challenge the rightwing ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, which leads opinion polls.
Tusk told the crowd, which he estimated at more than 1mn people, that the ruling party, led by Jarosław Kaczyński, had used “a whole textbook of hatred” to divide Poles during its eight years in office.
Instead, he pledged “to end the Polish-Polish war the day after the elections. Once the aggressor is chased away, there is no reason for war.”
The election on October 15 in the EU’s fifth-largest member is significant because the PiS-led government has been feuding with Brussels. Tusk argues that this could herald an attempt to leave the EU and return Poland to authoritarianism.
Tusk and his party hope Sunday’s rally will help them unseat PiS, which is seeking a third term in office and accuses Tusk of working with Berlin, Brussels and even Moscow to undermine Polish sovereignty.
The rally was labelled “the march of a million hearts”, and Tusk said this target had been reached. However, state-controlled television, which Tusk claims is a mouthpiece for PiS, said up to 100,000 people had gathered in Warsaw, citing unofficial police sources.
Similar pro-opposition rallies were held on Sunday in other Polish cities including Łódź, Wałbrzych and Kraków.
PiS held its own rally in Katowice, where prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki is standing. PiS legislator Ryszard Terlecki published a photo from the city on social media, with the caption: “Today the heart of Poland beats in Katowice, not at a gathering of empty hearts in Warsaw.”
Student Radoslaw Miadiełko said he was in Warsaw to show his support for Poland’s EU membership. “This third term of PiS may bring us to the moment when they will want to take us out of the EU. I fear it. That’s why I’m here,” he said.
Demonstrators, many waving Polish and EU flags, crossed Warsaw’s main avenues, with Tusk — president of the European Council in 2014-19 — marching at the front. Civic Platform had used almost 450 buses to bring in supporters.
“I expected there would be mainly young people here, but many older people and retirees came. It’s a good sign,” said Anna Kryńska, who brought her two young children. She said she wanted to show them the sense of community she experienced in 1989, when Poles voted to overthrow communism.
PiS is leading in the latest polls, with 37-39 per cent of those surveyed intending to vote for the party, compared with 30 per cent for Civic Platform. With neither expected to secure a majority, the vote could be followed by tough coalition negotiations.
The vote also comes as the government, which had been a staunch supporter of Ukraine in its war against Russia, changed tack in a dispute over grain imports, threatening to stop the supply of weapons.
In neighbouring Slovakia, former premier and Ukraine sceptic Robert Fico won parliamentary elections at the weekend and will try to form a ruling coalition.
Sunday’s rally appeared larger than that of June 4, when an estimated 500,000 people protested in Warsaw against a government-sponsored law to investigate pro-Russia politicians and potentially ban them from office. The law’s critics dubbed it “Lex Tusk” because the opposition leader could be its highest-profile target.
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