While hosting Poland’s Got Talent, the local edition of the international TV hit, Szymon Hołownia once came close to tears after hearing a singer who recounted her difficult journey to reach the country from Mongolia.
His empathy with contestants on the talent show is now on display in a different battle for the centre stage — parliamentary debates. As part of the pro-EU coalition of parties led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk that came into power in December, Hołownia has been elected Speaker of the Polish parliament and is likely to run for the country’s presidency next year.
The 47-year old former TV host has quickly garnered the sympathy of voters, becoming more popular than both Tusk, 66, and the premier’s long-standing nemesis, Jarosław Kaczyński, 74, who is the leader of the rightwing Law and Justice (PiS) that led the country for eight years.
“Sometimes people from my coalition seem to be upset and hold a grudge because I let Jarosław Kaczyński speak in this parliament,” Hołownia told the Financial Times. “But I believe that the greatest gift for us is to let him talk, because from one appearance to the next he is flying more into outer space, far away from reality.”
Kaczyński has spearheaded a backlash against the ruling coalition, claiming that Tusk is using illegal methods, including alleged torture, to oust PiS loyalists. While no longer commanding a parliamentary majority, the PiS leader can rely on the country’s President Andrzej Duda and the constitutional court — which is packed with PiS-appointed judges — to scupper Tusk’s reforms.
The opposition leader has recently made veiled threats to topple the government by “various methods”, install a transition administration and hold fresh elections — prompting Tusk to warn Kaczyński against plotting a coup.
Hołownia played down the threat, interpreting Kaczyński’s comments as an attempt to retain voter support ahead of local and European parliament elections.
Recent opinion polls show the gap between Tusk’s coalition and PiS widening. “I think that every time PiS provokes more hate, they will drop another five per cent in the polls,” Hołownia said.
Hołownia, who leads the centrist Poland 2050 party within the coalition, has used the record turnout in last October’s election to boost interest in the Sejm, the lower house of parliament. In December, cinemas broadcast live coverage of Tusk’s investiture and the Sejm now has 736,000 subscribers to its YouTube channel. What has become known as Poland’s Sejmflix is “a new model of a strong participant democracy”, he said. Under PiS, “this place was like a temple, kept behind close curtains, like in the 19th century”.
“Hołownia really had to learn on the job,” said Michał Baranowski, director of the Warsaw office of the German Marshall Fund think-tank. “The Speaker was always this very serious and official person, distant from the people, and he is much more approachable.”
Hołownia is expected to run for president next year to replace Duda, who is in his second and last term.
Last month 54 per cent of respondents said they trusted him, according to a survey by pollster Ibris — the highest level enjoyed by any Polish politician since Ibris started its monthly survey eight years ago. Duda and Tusk ranked fourth and fifth, respectively, while Kaczyński was in 11th place in voters’ preferences.
Hołownia’s “honest” portrayal of the difficulties his coalition faces reassures voters, said former finance minister Leszek Balcerowicz: “I think Hołownia is now the most popular politician because he doesn’t use his great verbal skills to tell people cheap things.”
Hołownia plans to confirm by November whether he will compete for the presidency. He made his first bid in 2020, coming in third behind Duda and Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, who is from Tusk’s Civic Platform party.
A run-off against 52-year old Trzaskowski, who has yet to confirm his renewed bid for the presidency, would be “a completely different kind of election because we would have two relatively young guys, from the new political generation, who like each other and are not shouting at each other”, Hołownia said.
Despite the more conciliatory tone he has struck with PiS, Hołownia infuriated the opposition in December when he expelled two lawmakers sentenced to prison for abuses of power.
The fate of former PiS interior minister Mariusz Kamiński and his then-deputy Maciej Wąsik, who at one point sought refuge in the presidential palace, was turned by PiS and Duda into a cause célèbre, with the opposition labelling them “political prisoners” and Kaczyński alleging that Tusk ordered their torture — a claim the prime minister denies. Duda pardoned them last month, and they have since been released from prison and are seeking to retake their parliamentary seats.
Hołownia said that the case would “resolve itself” as the two were likely to stand in the June EU elections, aiming for “luxury exile” in the European parliament. But he lamented a dispute that “should be number 25, or in fact 52, on the list of the most important problems of Poland but somehow you see that it is presented sometimes as number one — this is crazy”.
The government was “now driving our country around this very dangerous bend in the road and we have to be 100 per cent concentrated only on the things that we have to do and not on what others could do,” Hołownia said. “They will be shouting, trying to blow away everything that we are doing, but we have to be confident.”
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