Introduction

On October 13th, currently ruling party Prawo i Sprawiedliwość – Zjednoczona Prawica (Law & Justice – United Right) has won its second straight parliamentary election and retain the right to be in charge of the government. This time, landslide victory didn’t happen as it was back in 2015, when took the Sejm (lower house) and Senat (upper house) by commanding margin and becoming the first single party since 1989 democratisation winning majority in both houses. This time, the opposing Koalicja Obywatelska (Civic Coalition) with independent Senators will rule in the Senat. Upcoming 9th term in the history of Polish parliamentarism after 1989 could be really turbulent, with presidential elections next year that could totally turn the tables. Why are those elections the key? Could the next few years be politically difficult for Poland? The way that Polish political system is built trigger that uncertainty, let’s have a look on it.

Separation of Powers

According to the Constitution, power in Poland is divided into three branches: executive, legislative and judiciary, although we couldn’t call our system parliamentary republic or presidential republic or even semi-presidential republic. Power distribution, electoral process regarding Parliament and President don’t give a clear advantage on either over another.

Parliament

As it was mentioned before, Polish Parliament is bicameral system, having Sejm (lower house) and Senat (upper house). There are 460 MPs in the Sejm and just 100 Senators, both elected by direct elections, every four year (or earlier, in the result of shortening the term of office, which already happened) in direct elections, however in different electoral systems. Members of upper house are elected in party-list proportional election, seats are allocated using the D’Hondt method, which, by a definition, favours larger parties. The evidence was seen 4 years ago, when victorious Prawo i Sprawiedliwość – Zjednoczona Prawica won getting 37,58% of votes, that gave over 51% of seats leading to majority. Speaking about Senat, since 2011 we have a “winner takes is all” system, so, basically two main parties occupy the seats in upper house.

Parliament obviously has a right to vote bills, both houses need to agree to become a law (President’s signing makes a law enter into force at the very end), however Sejm has a power to override Senat’s refusal. Apart of that, government or given minister gets a vote of confidence from it, as well as vote of no confidence, as one of the Parliament’s roles is to control the actions of the government.

A specific constitutional body is the National Assembly, which is basically joint sitting of both Sejm and Senat, which is headed by Marshal of the Sejm (could be replaced by Marshal of the Senat, when absent). National Assembly has special rights, that are regarding to the President – for example, they could remove the President from its office, however in very specific circumstances.

President

President of Poland is the head of the state of our country. He is elected by popular election, in most cases after two rounds, but when the candidate gets more than 50% of votes in the first round, he could already be elected – it happened only once after 1989 (2000, when Aleksander Kwaśniewski has won). Head of state’s term lasts 5 years and can be renewed once.

Mr. President has a legislative initiative (even regarding to the change of the Consitution), namely he can bring a bill to the floor of Parliament, like also signs a bill that after the signing is in force. However, the head of state’s competency doesn’t include more than signing bill, he could also use a veto to halt the enactment of law, propose presidential amendments or submit the bill to the Constitutional Tribunal so check his compliance with the Constitution.

One of the most important competencies that Polish President has is the availability to designate the new Prime Minister and ask him to form a new government, like also swear-in the members of the government. According to the law, the President could designate anyone to be a PM, but usually this is the candidate proposed by ruling party/coalition.

Being officially the First Citizen of Poland, President represents Poland in the international area, but he’s not enforced to lead country’s foreign policy, as it’s the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ competency, so they should cooperate (naturally with the Prime Minister either), same with the military, being is the Supreme Commander. Considering, the foreign policy, President is able to ratify and terminate the international treaty.

Courts

Few words about judiciary power in Poland. Our Constitution guarantees its total independence from other powers, however it’s not entirely like this. In the cases of courts, judges are appointed by the President, but candidates are presented by other judges, so it guarantees the real independence. However, speaking about Tribunals, the judges are elected by Sejm which doesn’t make a constitutional body totally independent from other powers. Speaking about Constitutional Tribunal, candidates could be indicated by a political party and elected by that party.

Is Polish Political System Equal to Ones in the Western Europe?

The Prime Minister has the greatest availability to rule the country, but as a citizen I don’t have any influence about who would become that one. In opposite to the UK, where the leader of a winning party become a Prime Minister, it’s not that guaranteed in my country. That could lead to the situation when the Prime Minister has to listen to the leader of a party, if isn’t one, if he wants to keep his position. As you can see, Prime Minister’s leadership could be dramatically limited. I remember the 2005 elections, when Prawo i Sprawiedliwość won and everyone expected party’s leader Jarosław Kaczyński to become the Prime Minister. However, the party indicated quite anonymous Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz to create a government. Another example regards to current PM – Mateusz Morawiecki. Four years ago I didn’t know anything about him, back in the day, he was a CEO of a large bank in Poland and after that he became the Minister of Development.

Let’s have a look at the president. He has the strongest democratic legitimacy, as he is elected in direct popular elections. However, his power is limited, so he couldn’t make a use of his support to the extent which would be possible. During the campaign president could promise basically everything and it’s okay for him, due to the fact, that at the end of the day he could say that Parliament refused and he did whatever he could, since the legislative initiative is the only thing President controls totally.

Back to my point from the beginning of the article, why are presidential elections so important right now? It’s simple; if opposition’s candidate won, that would lead to vetoing nearly every bill accepted by the Parliament, so government would just do administrative job rather than adopting its policy. Same story from the presidential perspective, every bill proposed by the Head of State due to the legislative initiative would be refused. The coordination of actions regarding foreign policy would become difficult, because of different foreign policy’s vision.

What’s the conclusion? It’s better to have the legislative and executive powers represented by one political party for moving the country forward. With party-list proportional election that forces MPs to in fact listening to more extent their party’s leader rather than voters, system could be totally blocked for few years. Why so? It might be brutal what I’m about to say right now, but sometimes it’s more worthy for MPs to vote in the Parliament in compliance to leader’s will, even if bill could be harmful for MP’s constituency or against person’s beliefs. Voting against the likes of party would lead to being erased from party’s list by the next election, even if MP is doing good for his region.

Prime Minister of Poland Mateusz Morawiecki

Les Leçons du Pouvoir Polonais – Insight into Polish Political System