Half a million Poles took to the streets of Warsaw on Sunday to demonstrate against the populist nationalist government in power, a few months before the autumn legislative elections, the organizers announced. "City Hall estimates (attendance) at 500,000 at the moment," Jan Grabiec, spokesperson for the organizers of the big march, which appears to be the largest in this time, told Agence France-Presse. country since the fall of communism in 1989.
Coming from all over Poland, the demonstrators – sporting the Polish white and red colors and those of the European Union – responded to the call of the leader of the main centrist opposition party (Civic Platform, PO), the former leader of the European Council, Donald Tusk, in protest against "high cost, cheating and lying, in favor of democracy, free elections and the EU". The leaders of the majority of opposition parties have encouraged their supporters to join the big march against the populist nationalist ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, its leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, and its allies.
" That's enough ! ", "We don't want an authoritarian Poland", "The PiS is the dear life", proclaimed placards directed against the majority in power in Poland for almost eight years, in the run-up to the legislative elections scheduled for autumn. With white and red hearts glued to their chests, PO officials led the march, accompanied by the legendary leader of the first free trade union in the communist world in the 1980s, Lech Walesa, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1983.
In a brief inaugural speech, Donald Tusk stressed that the opposition's mission is "comparable in importance" to that of the 1980s and the fight against communism at the time.
Long absent from the political scene, Lech Walesa said he had waited "patiently" for the day when the Nationalist Party and its leader Kaczynski had to go. “Mr. Kaczynski, we came to get you. That day has arrived," he said. The date of the protest, which the opposition sees as a watershed moment in its march towards an eventual election victory, is the 34th anniversary of Poland's first partially free elections, which precipitated the fall of communism in Europe.
Lech Walesa's movement had then succeeded in placing 160 of its candidates in the Lower House, thus winning almost all the seats it could claim, i.e. 35% of the mandates of this assembly, and 99% of all the positions. of senators.
