The main Polish opposition force, Law and Justice (PiS), will nominate non-party historian Karol Nawrocki, president of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), as a candidate in the presidential election due next spring, it was announced in Krakow on Sunday. Karol Nawrocki was proposed as an independent candidate at the Cracow assembly by Andrzej Nowak, history professor at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, on behalf of the citizens’ committee of 170 prominent Polish personalities. He emphasized: the candidate can connect various social circles.
Jaroslaw Kaczyński, the president of PiS, emphasized at the meeting that his party supports the independent candidate because there is a situation that can be called an “internal war” in Poland, which PiS does not want, and according to surveys, neither does the majority of society. Nawrocki can put an end to this situation, and this is in the interest of the sovereign Polish state, Kaczyński added.
The 41-year-old Nawrocki was elected by the lower house of parliament in 2021 as the president of the IPN, which also deals with the research of totalitarian regimes and the prosecutor’s investigation of World War II and communist crimes. Before that, between 2017 and 2021, he was the director of the Museum of the Second World War in Gdansk on the Baltic Sea. At the age of twenty-one, he won the Polish youth boxing championship in the 91 kg category. In February of this year, Nawrocki was put on the list of people wanted by Russia after Russia opened criminal proceedings against him for the destruction of Soviet Red Army monuments in Poland at the initiative of the IPN.
The main Polish governing force, the Civic Coalition (KO) party alliance, is proposing the 52-year-old Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski as a candidate, according to Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s announcement on Saturday. In the previous presidential election in 2020, Trzaskowski came second behind the current head of state Andrzej Duda, who was elected as a PiS candidate. The KO candidate will present his program to the wider public on December 7.
The Polish ruling party again nominates the mayor of Warsaw as head of state
In addition to KO, among the groupings of the broad Polish government coalition, the party called Poland 2050 named its candidate, namely Szymon Holownia, the president of the lower house of parliament (Sejm). On behalf of the Left, which is also in the government coalition, Robert Biedron, a member of the European Parliament and one of the leaders of the group, called it likely that this will take place in mid-December and that their candidate will be a woman. Among the opposition parties, the Confederation consisting of small parties and the grouping called Free Republicans put forward candidates in the person of Slawomir Mentzen and Marek Jakubiak.
In Poland, two-round, direct presidential elections are held every five years. Andrzej Duda cannot run for more than one term, because according to the constitution, the head of state can only be elected for two terms.
Source: nepszava.hu
