The populist PiS has an edge in these elections as the party in power during a period of prosperity. In recent years, Poland’s growth rates have put other EU economies to shame. Incomes have increased and unemployment has remained low.

Clouds on the horizon, such as food price inflation, are few and far away. 

Just as importantly, PiS is the party that four years ago understood that the way to win elections is through income redistribution.

PiS stormed to power in 2015, pushing aside the centre-right Civic Platform by promising generous subsidies for families with children.

Through its “500+” programme, PiS handed out around 115 euros a month for each child to families with more than one. This summer, it extended the programme to include families with one child. 

While opposition parties initially criticised “500+” as irresponsible spending, it has become too popular to touch. PiS’s two main challengers in October — Civic Platform and the left-wing Lewica alliance — both say they will keep it. 

In European Parliament elections in May, PiS drew most of its support from working-class people and the lower echelons of the middle class in rural areas and small towns, as well as the elderly.

The party correctly diagnosed that the aspirations of many of these people had not been met — even after Poland joined the EU and the economy grew. It positioned itself as the party able to meet them.

At the start of the Lublin convention, after flag-waving crowds sang the national anthem, a father of five from the small town of Otwock near Warsaw took to the stage to express his gratitude for “500+” and other handouts offered by PiS.

Thanks to PiS, he said he was able to buy a house with a garden and give his kids better holidays and after-school activities. 

Media later revealed (in Polish) that the man was actually a bank board member with a high income to begin with, but the gimmick showed how adept PiS has become at sublimating the “Polish dream”.

Who doesn’t want a house with a garden in the leafy suburbs of Warsaw?

Who doesn’t want a house with a garden in the leafy suburbs of Warsaw?

Still, to win another four years in office, PiS knows it cannot just pat itself on the back. So it played another bold hand at the convention, promising to double the minimum monthly wage to 4,000 zloty (around 900 euros) by 2023.

Many Polish workers are on the minimum wage and are struggling to make ends meet given a regressive tax system, expensive housing and rising food costs. That explains why PiS’s main opponents have also promised to increase it.

But opposition parties have mostly expressed their pledges as woolly percentages of average income. PiS instinctively realised that only hard figures — like 4,000 zloty — do the trick.

As part of its vision of a “Polish welfare state”, PiS has also promised, among other things, two extra months of pension payments each year for retired people by 2021, higher subsidies for farmers and improvements in road and rail infrastructure, especially linking small towns and metropolises. 

Law and Justice leader Jarowslaw Kaczynski makes a speech earlier this year. Photo: EPA-EFE/Wojciech Olkusnik

Be a ‘good Pole’

In Lublin, PiS’s ultra-conservative leader, Jarowslaw Kaczynski, made clear that to benefit from the new welfare state one needs to be “a good Pole”. He went on to explain.

First, Kaczynski defined the family — that almost sacred institution that PiS claims to champion — as “a man, a woman, their long-lasting relationship and their children”. That excludes the “LGBT lobby”, which the party has made a point of demonising in recent months.

Next, Kaczynski sang praises of the Polish nation, claiming that “only a nation-state can be democratic” before adding that Polish national identity is inextricably linked to Catholicism. 

“Every good Pole should know what the role of the Catholic Church is, because beyond the church there is only nihilism,” Kaczynski said.

Every good Pole should know what the role of the Catholic Church is, because beyond the church there is only nihilism

– PiS leader Jarowslaw Kaczynski

He went on to describe the Polish nation as being at the core of Europe. But it also stands for freedom in Europe, he said, at a time when freedom is under attack from many sides.

He further insisted on the importance of national sovereignty, which he said was especially important to Poles who were deprived of their state throughout history. 

Repackaging many of his favourite themes, Kaczynski’s speech highlighted the second key ingredient in PiS’s recipe for “restoring dignity”: identification with a nationalist project in which Poland “does not apologise for itself”.

Kaczynski speaks in parliament in 2017. File photo: EPA/Bartomiej Zborowski

Where is the opposition?

These days, PiS is polling at more than 40 per cent, compared with around 25-30 per cent for Civic Platform and 12-13 per cent for Lewica. Far behind is an alliance between the agrarian PSL party and the populist Kukiz ’15 party. 

Opposition hopes of an anti-PiS alliance in government are fading. PiS looks set to hold a parliamentary (though not constitutional) majority. Questions remain about how many groupings will make it to parliament or whether PiS might need to poach a few MPs from other parties. 

Last week, Civic Platform’s unpopular leader, Grzegorz Schetyna, pulled out of the race for prime minister in favour of Malgorzata Kidawa-Blonska, deputy speaker of the lower house of parliament.

Kidawa-Blonska is a less divisive figure but the impact of the change on polls is hard to gauge. The programme (in Polish) she presented this month, drafted under Schetyna’s leadership, has little of the lustre of PiS’s populist manifesto. 

Civic Platform pledges to undo PiS reforms limiting the independence of the judiciary and public media. It will introduce compulsory referenda on petitions when a million signatures are raised.

It also calls for gender equality, subsidised in-vitro fertility treatments, longer paternity leave and the legalisation of civil partnerships.

In terms of economic measures, Civic Platform wants to give premiums to pensioners who keep working in a labour market hit by demographic decline and a lowered retirement age.

It pledges bonuses for the poorest workers, tax breaks for entrepreneurs, grants for new businesses and free internet for young people.

Meanwhile, it wants to raise the minimum wage to half of the average income. And Civic Platform promises to shorten waiting lines to see specialist doctors and to fight against smog. 

“The whole programme could be considered a little timid, as a not very convincing half-step in the direction of the standards of the European centre,” Jakub Majmurek, a publicist for the left-wing Krytyka Polityczna organisation, wrote in Newsweek. 

“What lacked from the proposals was one major thought about how to help the economy move into the next level of development. The proposals that did appear — lower barriers to merging companies, new corporate tax rules, tax breaks for investments in development, tax exemptions for young entrepreneurs — are limited to deregulation and cutting taxes.

“They look like they’re coming from the 1990s and might not work in 2019, when public opinion expects to see from the state braver policies to stimulate development.”

The next parliament will likely include forces from across the political spectrum, keeping hope alive that pluralist debate will continue even as PiS tightens its grip on power.

Arguably, the programme of the third-largest force contending the elections, Lewica, is more innovative.

An alliance between Poland’s ex-communist SLD party and two of the most dynamic new parties on the Polish political scene, Razem and Wiosna, Lewica had its pick of many interesting proposals. 

Before the PiS convention, Razem leader Adrian Zandberg was regarded as the biggest champion of a “welfare state” in Poland. (Kaczynski may have cribbed the idea for his “Polish version of the welfare state”.) 

Lewica’s pledges include gradual increases in the minimum wage negotiated with trade unions and a larger, faster increase for public-sector workers, including teachers and doctors.

It also wants to see a minimum pension for all, an increase in health financing to 6.8 per cent of gross domestic product and prescription drugs available for five zloty (around one euro).

It would create a public company to build a million affordable housing units and commit to ensuring that most energy comes from renewable sources by 2035.

In addition, Lewica promises 3.5 billion zloty (800 million euros) annual investment in innovation projects, a strict separation between church and state and legalisation of civil partnerships and abortions.   

What PiS and Lewica have in common is a recognition of the need for state intervention in the economy — something that many Poles now expect after four years of PiS in government. 

A crucial difference is that PiS primarily bets on social transfers — which are popular but highly dependent on the will of the political leadership — while Lewica has a more traditional social-democratic vision centered on strengthening the public sector. 

Whatever the merits of other parties’ proposals, most pundits expect PiS to come out on top in October, helped by its control of public media and a steady stream of nationalist-conservative rhetoric that appeals to many voters.

The good news for the party’s critics is that the Polish political scene remains very much alive as the government and opposition parties spar over policy.

The next parliament will likely include forces from across the political spectrum, keeping hope alive that pluralist debate will continue even as PiS tightens its grip on power.

Claudia Ciobanu is a Warsaw-based correspondent for Reporting Democracy. The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of BIRN.