By Barbara Erling, Kuba Stezycki and Fatos Bytyci
WARSAW (Reuters) -Tens of thousands of people took the streets of Warsaw on Sunday to show support for rival candidates in next week’s tightly-contested Polish presidential election that the government views as crucial to its efforts for democratic reform.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk hopes to galvanise support for his candidate, the liberal Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, to replace the outgoing Andrzej Duda, a nationalist who has vetoed many of his efforts to reform the judiciary.
“All of Poland is looking at us. All of Europe is looking at us. The whole world is looking at us,” Trzaskowski told supporters who waved Polish and European Union flags.
Tusk swept to power in 2023 with a broad alliance of leftist and centrist parties, on a promise to undo changes made by the nationalist Law and Justice government that the European Union said had undermined democracy and women’s and minority rights.
Trzaskowski beat nationalist Karol Nawrocki by two percentage points in the first round of the election on May 18, but is struggling to sustain his lead, according to opinion polls.
Nawrocki’s voters, some wearing hats bearing the words “Poland is the most important”, gathered in a different part of the capital to show support for his drive to align Poland more closely with U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies.
“I am the voice of all those whose cries do not reach Donald Tusk today. The voice of all those who do not want Polish schools to be places of ideology, our Polish agriculture to be destroyed, or our freedom taken away,” Nawrocki told the crowd on Sunday.
Some of his supporters carried banners with slogans such as “Stop Migration Pact”, “This is Poland,” or displayed images of Trump.
“He is the best candidate, the most patriotic, one who can guarantee that Poland is independent and sovereign,” said Jan Sulanowski, 42.
Approximately 50,000 attended the gathering of Karol Nawrocki’s supporters, while about 140,000 people participated in the march supporting Trzaskowski, the Polish Press Agency reported, citing unofficial preliminary estimates from city authorities.
At Trzaskowski’s march, the newly-elected president of Romania Nicusor Dan pledged to work closely with Tusk and Trzaskowski “to ensure Poland and the European Union remain strong”.
Dan’s unexpected victory in a vote on May 18 over a hard-right Trump supporter was greeted with relief in Brussels and other parts of Europe, as many were concerned that his rival George Simion would have complicated EU efforts to tackle Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Jakub Kaszycki, 21, joined the pro-Trzaskowski march, saying it could determine Poland’s future direction. “I very much favour… the west way to Europe, not to Russia,” he said.
At Trzaskowski’s march, people held banners displaying the word “Demonkraci” alongside images that associated Duda and Nawrocki with a demonic version of democracy as opposed to the “okay” democracy “DemOKracja” represented by Trzaskowski and his wife.
(Reporting by Barbara Erling, Kuba Stężycki, Fatos Bytyci; editing by Barbara Lewis)
