Fear and xenophobia poison Polish polls
Source: The Guardian UK
The country is thriving, but the rightwing Law and Justice party’s anti-migrant and introspective campaign has won over many voters before Sunday’s election. Call it the Polish paradox. As voters head to the ballot box on Sunday to pick a new parliament, the mood is decidedly at odds with the facts. The country has taken in few refugees during Europe’s year of desperate migration – yet the campaign is marked by introspection and xenophobia (“migrants carry very dangerous diseases,” said the head of the frontrunner rightwing party last week).
The Polish economy is one of Europe’s most robust – but the talk is of mismanagement, tax avoidance and surrender to Germany. Poland should be a confident, big European player but it appears mired in fear, recrimination and an almost pathological antipathy to the idea of change.
“They are not talking about the issues that matter,” said one voter, Janina Zurowska-Filipek, a fruit and veg seller from Warsaw. “They are promoting fear of immigrants when, in fact, migrants are not going to come to Poland. They want to go to rich countries.”
“We have reached the limit of our capacity to absorb changes,’’ said Jacek Kucharczyk, director of the Institute of Public Affairs. “We are about to give the country to a bunch of political extremists who have been smart enough to send consoling signals to people who are scared. We are going through a kind of counter-Reformation.” By “extremists” he means the Law and Justice party of Andrzej Duda, who won a presidential vote five months ago. Law and Justice may need a partner to form a government but according to the latest surveys, his party will finish at least 10% ahead of the governing centrist Civic Platform.
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/23/poland-election-law-and-justice-party
Sadly, this xenophobic streak runs thru many of the new eastern European members of the EU and NATO. Many have relatively small populations, all have no real history of immigration and assimilation like here in the US, and most still defensively protect their hard-won restored sovereignty and their national cultural identity.
Becoming a truly modern nation is a process. Yeah, I know, who are we to talk in light of the racist comments from leading Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, but still.
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