Day 137: Poland

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I like Poland. A lot of new immigrants to the U.K are from Poland.

It's also got one of the most unstable party systems in the E.U; both the main parties of the right (AWS and their various allies) and left (SLD) have collapsed (AWS totally; a rump of the SLD survived last years elections and the party is still strong in some industrial areas) over the course of just two elections resulting in a political vaccum which has been filled by various personality-driven parties with no real ideology (beyond (let's take PiS as an example) vague rhetoric about wanting to clean up politics/society/both and clever attacks on rival parties) and apathy; IIRC turnout was around 40% last year. Perhaps astonishing the old PSL is still around and in the Sejm, but it's a shadow of it's former self (in 1993 it took 132 seats in the Sejm) and it's role as the voice of rural protest has been usurped by the dubious personality cult of Lepper.
PiS's longterm prospects can't be too good; despite nation-wide success last year, the party did badly in it's early stronghold of Warsaw (where they only gained a little ground in the Sejm elections and were thrashed in the Presidential election) a city which they'd been running for a while. And there honeymoon period (they were as high as 44% in the polls earlier this year) appears to have ended (having dropped something like 15pts in a few months).