Szymon Holownia

After the unexpected success of the opposition march last Sunday in Warsaw, which put a record half a million people on the streets of the capital according to the organisers, democratic political parties seeking to defeat PiS in the general election are feeling emboldened.

Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski raised over 1.6 million signatures to register his candidacy for the presidential elections on June 28 in the five days he was given for the task. By law, he needed 100,000 for his candidacy to be validated.

Those three are Malgorzata Kidawa-Blonska from the centrist Civic Coalition, Wladyslaw Kosianiak-Kamysz from the agrarian Polish People's Party and independent Szymon Holownia. 

Jitters in the PiS camp were confirmed by party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski himself during an interview published on February 26 by Gazeta Polska, a magazine considered friendly to the right-wing government.