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Soriek  5mo ago (text post)   999 thread views

Transnational Thursdays 28

Apologies if this is a double post. I posted the original earlier but was told it appears as deleted to other users. Here's hoping it works this time.

This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum lives in or might be interested in. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Poland

A month and a half after the election Poland has finally kinda sorta formed a government, or as Politico rather impolitely puts it:

“Poland’s zombie government shuffles into being: One former PM joked that the new Cabinet led by Mateusz Morawiecki would have a lifespan shorter than that of a house fly.”

Polish President Andrzej Duda on Monday swore in a new government headed by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki — whose term in office is likely to be only a maximum of 14 days.

Why so short? Well, because they lost, of course. PiS was still the biggest winner in terms of overall votes so they get the first chance to form a government, but they wouldn’t have a majority even with the far right Confederation, who has refused to work with them anyway. It’s weird, but I guess Morawiecki has two weeks to appoint ministers and run a normal government before a vote of confidence happens, which he will lose.

in a sign of the real import of the ceremony, the speakers of both the parliament and the upper chamber Senate didn’t bother showing up.

After that two weeks then Donald Tusk’s Civic Coalition gets its chance to form a coalition, which for now is hammered out:

Tusk’s Civic Coalition is an electoral alliance of four parties led by his centrist Civic Platform party which also includes the Greens.

A new political group called the Third Way includes the long-established agrarian party, the Polish People’s Party, and Poland 2050, a relatively new party led by Szymon Holownia, a conservative Catholic who had trained to be a Dominican friar but became a journalist and was co-host of Poland’s Got Talent reality show.

Another coalition partner, the New Left, includes some former members of the pre-1989 Communist party but increasingly a new generation of younger progressives. It stresses support for women’s and LGBTQ+ rights and for fighting climate change.

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