This state of play is the result of elections last year that gave an absolute majority to PiS in the legislature, even though it won 37.6 percent of the vote on a turnout of 51 percent. The party’s leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, effectively combined conservative social policy with populist economic policy. (Sound familiar?) [...]
So far there’s been no violence. But KOD, a new pro-democracy movement, put an estimated 200,000 people on the streets for a protest in early May. Its leaders say they are worried that it’s only a matter of time before blood is spilled. [...]
It’s hard to imagine that the language of the unrepentant PiS vote wasn’t affected by the rhetoric of the movement pushing for the U.K. to leave the EU, which emphasizes that membership, particularly in the European Commission, compromises British sovereignty.
Another echo is the recent insistence by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey that the EU can’t tell him how to govern his country.
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