Law and Justice

Rights groups said any doubt that Poland's annual November 11 Independence March has become a platform for far-right extremists were dispelled by this year's event. The banners alone set the tone.

This year's event on Monday follows a general election in October that handed the ultranationalist Law and Justice party (PiS) a second term in power and saw 11 candidates from a far-right alliance win seats in parliament. Rights groups say the political climate has never been more friendly to far-right extremism.

Still smarting from losing the Senate by a whisker earlier this month, Poland's governing populists are contesting the result.

Opposition parties won 48 seats in the upper house, helped by a strategy of not fielding candidates against each other. Combined with the votes of three independents who support them, that gives the opposition just enough clout to control the chamber.

The decision was an administrative one but the timing was a boon for Poland's ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) ahead of the vote.

Then, just as the illiberal populists thought they had the upper hand, Poland's liberal democrats got a boost from news that feminist author Olga Tokarczuk had won the Nobel Prize for literature.

And in Hungary's local elections, the opposition retook power in Budapest and won mayoral races in 10 other cities.

The question now is whether these results augur a broader political shift in the region.

The centrist Civic Coalition got 27.4 per cent while the left-wing Lewica alliance scored 12.6 per cent. Next came the PSL-Kukiz'15 alliance of agrarians and populists with 8.6 per cent and the far-right Confederation with 6.8 per cent.

Poland's ruling Conservative Nationalist Law and Justice Party wins the parliamentary elections held yesterday.

Exit polls suggest that governing is likely to retain an absolute majority. Justice and Justice Jaroslaw Kaczynski received 43.6 percent of the vote and 239 seats in the 460-seat lower house of parliament.

The conservatives in PiS, however, put income redistribution to the fore of the public agenda, party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski even extolling people to read Capital in the 21st Century, the global bestseller by French economist Thomas Picketty that cast fresh light on the issue of inequality.

In many countries, even supporters of anti-populist parties have begun consciously accepting pathological behaviour, rule-breaking, and even illegal acts on the part of their chosen political representatives.

Following Gresham's Law, which holds that bad money drives out the good, opposition forces increasingly feel compelled to scheme and cheat in order to win.

What's up with Polish men?

A survey commissioned by independent media outlet oko.press shows that the biggest fear of Polish young men is… wait for it… the LGBT movement.