EU Elections a Dry Run for Poland’s United Opposition

"If you count the total number of PiS voters, there might not be that many but they do show up to vote," said Bartek Lech, an independent EU affairs analyst in Szczecin, northwest Poland.

The opposition's strategy, he said, "is not to take votes away from PiS - this is almost impossible. It is to mobilise the undecided and those who otherwise would not vote."

Taking on the 'Night King'

KE was brokered earlier this year by Grzegorz Schetnya, leader of the Civic Platform, PO, the main opposition force to PiS. The electoral alliance brings together PO and four other political parties including the Greens and an agrarian party, as well as a number of other allies.

Such an alliance is seen as the opposition's best hope of challenging PiS, which has lost little support since coming to power in 2015 despite accusations of deepening authoritarianism and years of confrontation with the EU over the independence of the courts.

The ace up the KE's sleeve is Donald Tusk, a former Polish prime minister and PO leader who currently leads the European Council. Tusk's term in Brussels ends this year and Polish media speculate he will return to Polish politics, with magazine covers, political cartoonists and social media memes depicting him riding to the country's rescue on a white horse.

Though formally barred from interfering in national politics, Tusk nevertheless gave a speech at Warsaw University on May 3 in which he portrayed the challenge for the opposition in Poland to a "confrontation with the Night King", a reference to the icy villain in Game of Thrones.

European Council President Donald Tusk gives a lecture about 'hope and responsibility' in Warsaw in early May 2019. Photo: EPA-EFE/RAFAL GUZ