Komorowski (left) with Sikorski - photo: East NewsUPDATE - Candidates in the primary election to chose Civic Platform’s candidate in this autumn’s presidential elections in Poland debated each other live on TV, Sunday lunchtime.
Speaker of the Lower House of Parliament (Sejm) Bronislaw Komorowski and Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski faced off at Warsaw University’s Library at 13.00 CET. The debate, lasting around 50 minutes, took place without the participation of the general public, however. The candidates, after an initial five minute statement, answered seven questions each on domestic and international policy.
The electorate is Civic Platform’s 46,000 membership who are voting via post and the internet with the results announced on March 27.
After two short videos on the candidate’s biographies, Civic Platform’s Joanna Mucha and Slawomir Nowak invited the politicians to make their opening remarks.
Sikorski concentrated on Poland’s position in the European Union and foreign affairs. “Today I dream of a safe and prosperous Poland,” said, and emphasised Poland’s active participation on the international stage. “My presidency will force Europe to look at us with new eyes.”
Komorowski, in his opening statement, said that he would be a force for consensus if elected president, unlike the incumbent, President Kaczynski. “Politics is an area of dispute but the president should neutralize those conflicts,” he said, in remarks that concentrated mainly on domestic policy. He said that the main goal for Poland was to catch up materially with the older members of the European Union.
Questions were then asked on foreign policy, particularly on relations with Russia and the modernisation of Poland’s armed forces, with both candidates promising to defend expenditure on defence.
On the constitution, both candidates agreed that the powers of the president in Poland should be restricted and the power of veto in particular - which President Kaczynski has used to block government legislation - should be weakened.
On social policy, Komorowski said: “I was and am against euthanasia and the death penalty. I am against abortion”. He did say, however, that he supported state funding of IVF treatment. Sikorski, while saying that politicians should not dictate the conscience of the general public, said he supported the more limited support for IVF as demonstrated by Civic Platform’s Jaroslaw Govin, who led a parliamentary commission on the issue, and which recommended treatment for married couples and poorer Poles only. “But in the future, we‘ll see,” he said.
Final questions concerned where the candidate’s first trip abroad would be, if elected as president. Komorowski said “Brussels or Vilnius,” with Sikorski also choosing Vilnius, mentioning that it was imperative that Lithuania fulfilled it’s duties towards the Polish minority there.
Personal is political
The risk to Civic Platform was always that, after PM Donald Tusk’s decision not to run for president, a competition between candidates for the membership’s vote could open up splits within the party.
As policy differences are few and far between the two politicians, campaigning has become increasingly personal. Komorowski has presented himself as a solid statesman and loyal party member, while pointing the finger at Sikorski’s political past, particularly the fact that he has been both a member of cabinets of Civic Platform and its arch-rival, Law and Justice, for whom he was defence secretary.
“I have not been a chess horse,” Komorowski said last week, “jumping after various political positions”.
When Sikorski pointed to the fact that Komorowski does not speak English, and that he, on the other hand, has studied and worked in England and the US, the speaker of the Sejm retorted: “I do not speak with an Oxford English accent [as the Foreign Minister is thought to do in Poland]. “But that‘s because when he was in England I was in prison.” Komorowski was an activist for the Solidarity trade union in the 1980s when Sikorski was out of the country.
Friends in unlikely places
Komorowski has emerged as a clear favourite with much of the political elite in Poland, receiving recommendations from Solidarity titans Lech Walesa and first prime minister after the fall of communism in 1989, Tadeusz Mazowiecki. Reports suggest that he is also a favourite of top politicians in Civic Platform.
Radek Sikorski, however, received unlikely support from outside the party in the shape of former deputy PM, arch Catholic-nationalist and leader of the League of Polish Families (LPR) Roman Giertych.
For instance, Giertych suggested last week that President Kaczynski would much rather face Komorowski in the elections later this year. “Sikorski would be a nightmare for Kaczynski. Komorowski would be a lot easier for him.”
Giertych also called Sikorski’s American wife, Anne Applebaum “a true Polish patriot”, praising her recent book Gulag, saying it was a realistic portrait of the horrors of the Soviet Union and Poland’s subjugation. Rzeczpospolita, and other media favourable to Komorowski, point to connections between Sikorski and Giertych which go back to when they were both ministers in the Law and Justice administration. Sikorski has praised in his memoirs the leader of LPR, saying that Giertych would be a political hit in the United States, where he would “lead the moral majority”.
Prominent Civic Platform politician Janusz Palikot suggested two weeks ago that Sikorski was a one-man “Civic Platform/Law and Justice coalition,” a statement which brought rebuke from the party leadership.
When asked during Sunday’s debate, who the candidates would choose to lead their presidential campaigns, Sikorski said “certainly not Janusz Palikot,” while Komorowski cut in, saying he would certainly not pick “Roman Giertych”. [update ends]
Story: Peter Gentle