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 (participation) at 500,000 at the moment," Jan Grabiec, spokesman for the organizers of the big march, which seems to be the largest in this country since the fall, told AFP. communism in 1989.
Coming from all over Poland, the demonstrators - sporting the Polish colors of white and red 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 Donald Tusk European Council, to protest against "the high cost of living, cheating and lying, in favor of democracy, free elections and the EU".
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 expensive", proclaimed placards directed against the majority in power in Poland for almost eight years, as the legislative elections approach. scheduled for the fall.
With white and red hearts glued to their chests, PO officials led the way, 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, Mr Tusk stressed that the mission of the opposition is "comparable in importance" to that of the 1980s and the fight against communism at the time.
Absent from the political scene for a long time, Mr. Walesa said he had waited "patiently" for the day when the nationalist party and its leader Kaczynski would have to leave. "Mr. Kaczynski, we came to get you. This day has arrived," said Mr. Walesa.
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.
04/06/2023 15:24:58 - Warsaw (AFP) © 2023 AFP
