Donald Tusk’s aggressive attacks on Karol Nawrocki are having the opposite of the intended effect. Poles are also unmoved by attempts to curtail the president’s powers. Surveys show that a majority want the president to have moreauthority than the prime minister. According to our sources, Tusk’s camp intends in this situation to rely on the secret services, intrigues, and the search for weak links inside the Presidential Chancellery. The key move is supposed to be blocking National Security Bureau chief Sławomir Cenckiewicz’s access to classified information – writes Piotr Lisiewicz in Gazeta Polska.
In Romania, the most popular clip online compares Poland’s president Karol Nawrocki – saluting troops with a firm “Czołem, żołnierze!”, dynamic, and training at the gym – with Nicușor Dan, the stiff, gaffe-prone former mayor of Bucharest who had just won the presidency there. Against this backdrop, Tusk looks no better than Dan.
Tusk’s and Putin’s nervous tics
The nervous tics Poles have noticed in Tusk in recent weeks eerily resemble Vladimir Putin’s grimaces before meeting President Donald Trump. The two men, who once shared a walk on the Sopot pier in 2009, seem to be aging in similar ways – except that in Tusk’s case, it shows more sharply, as he tries to keep pace with a young, energetic president.
Yet Tusk tries to conjure an alternate reality, insisting nothing has changed. After Nawrocki’s address, he argued: “This is not the first time I, as prime minister, have listened to a president’s speech where you can clearly see the desire to have powers vested in the prime minister and the government under Poland’s system.” He claimed the constitution was “clear and unambiguous”. “I hope – I can’t be sure, but I hope – that this sometimes rather defiant and confrontational tone won’t have practical consequences. But if necessary, we will firmly stand as guardians of the constitution and its rules,”he threatened. Elsewhere he warned: “Wherever he wants to obstruct, he’ll learn what the constitutional order really means, who rules this country. And I will be consistent in this matter, and if need be, ruthless.”
But 52 percent of Poles want the president to have more power than the prime minister, while only 38 percent prefer the opposite – according to a Pollster survey for Super Express. Poles’ intuition here is not wrong: in many countries where the president is directly elected, the office carries a strong democratic mandate. By contrast, Poland’s Constitution is inconsistent – granting the president a strong mandate, but weak powers. Tusk’s mandate is far weaker: he is merely the product of a fragile coalition of parties whose governance has already discredited itself so much that Rafał Trzaskowski lost the presidential race.
Tusk lacked Macron’s gesture
The Super Express poll shows Poles will not accept Tusk’s narrative that Nawrocki is a powerless figurehead. Curtailing Nawrocki’s authority means questioning the popular will, expressed clearly on issues such as illegal migration, Polish-German relations, and the Green Deal.
After losing the presidential election, Tusk could not muster the gesture Emmanuel Macron made. Recall: in last year’s European elections, France’s National Rally came first with 31.3 percent of the vote. Macron’s centrist Renaissance alliance came second – with just 14.6 percent. The Socialists took third with 13.8 percent. Macron, though not obliged to, called snap parliamentary elections. And it turned out the National Rally could not translate its win into power: the left-wing Popular Front took 182 seats, ahead of Macron’s bloc with 168 and the National Rally with 143.
Tusk, by contrast, merely asked his own parliament – where his December 13 coalition holds a majority – for a vote of confidence. Most Poles saw this for what it was: irrelevant, and avoiding the real verdict.
Cenckiewicz: the decisive battle Nawrocki cannot yield
Despite sharp polarization, President Nawrocki is enjoying a honeymoon period: another Pollster survey for Super Express shows 41 percent view his early decisions positively, against 30 percent negatively.
At the same time, Tusk floundered while trying to pin the EU recovery fund scandal (KPO) on PiS – a claim that rang hollow as reports poured in about coalition politicians’ families siphoning off millions.
With propaganda efforts failing, Tusk’s camp has turned to intrigue. Our sources say the plan is to knock out the president’s team by stripping Cenckiewicz of access to classified information. Agreeing to this would put Nawrocki’s camp on the defensive. As I wrote last week, Tusk and his circle are alarmed that Cenckiewicz, as head of the National Security Bureau, now has access to the most sensitive documents in the state. Sources insist Tusk’s camp will do everything to stop this – probing for weak links in Nawrocki’s entourage and warning them not to pursue a hard line, threatening that Tusk could sic the Internal Security Agency on the Presidential Chancellery. Of course, this is bluff and bluster – such a move would be political suicide for Tusk.
Tusk’s American setback
So far, his threats have produced little. Despite Tusk’s desperate efforts, he was excluded from President Donald Trump’s videoconference with European leaders. Poland was represented by President Nawrocki. This made clear that Tusk is seen internationally as a nuisance, an obstacle to Poland’s key interests – and that no European leaders were willing to fight for his seat at the table.
This rattled Tusk’s media allies. Bartosz T. Wieliński of Gazeta Wyborcza complained: “It was the Americans who pushed Nawrocki in over Tusk at the Trump meeting.” According to him: “The White House insisted that it be President Nawrocki, not Prime Minister Tusk, who joined the talks.”
Nawrocki scored again during Armed Forces Day in Warsaw, where he was clearly in his element – unlike Tusk and Trzaskowski. A historian and until recently head of the Institute of National Remembrance, Nawrocki spoke not only about history but about present defense needs:
“We must build a steel fist. We must have 1,000 K2 tanks – we need them now. We must expand and modernize the Polish Army, regardless of election cycles and parliamentary debates, and do what is necessary. As president of Poland I will watch closely the process of recruitment and the pace of enlistment. I am glad my call for an army of at least 300,000 was not rejected but outbid.”
Tusk’s contradictory messaging: puppet or Kaczyński’s rival?
Tusk’s attacks over the wind turbine bill also failed to convince. “President Nawrocki promised cheap electricity and therefore decided to veto a bill guaranteeing… cheap electricity,” he sneered. Hardly a credible defender of Poles against high prices.
Tusk’s position is also psychologically difficult: analysts agree he played a major role in Trzaskowski’s defeat, by ineptly attacking Nawrocki with Jacek Murański and indulging in gutter insinuations – like when he wrote: “When we built the Museum of the Second World War, we assumed it would be an important public institution. PiS and Nawrocki understood it as their home.” The affair was so absurd that no one remembers anymore what it was even about.
Unlike during President Duda’s tenure, Tusk’s camp now struggles to frame Nawrocki’s relationship with PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński. During the campaign, they called Nawrocki a mere PiS puppet. Now the message is the opposite. “The only politician in the chamber who was visibly nervous and emotional was Jarosław Kaczyński. Clearly, a new leader has emerged. I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes today,” Tusk claimed after Nawrocki’s address. So which is it – puppet or threat?