New leader wants to ‘clean up’ Poland. Does public trust him to do so?
When Donald Tusk formed a centrist coalition government in December to govern Poland, he finally received a chance to realize his campaign promise to “clean up” the country “with an iron broom.”
The previous right-wing government had turned inward and rolled back women’s and minority rights over the previous eight years. Now, he declared, Poland would strengthen relations with the European Union, reinstate abortion rights, and generally fix what he called the democratic backsliding of his populist predecessors.
But, like the 2020 presidential election in the United States, Poland’s parliamentary elections last year left the country still bitterly divided. The ousted Law and Justice party still has loyalists throughout the Polish judiciary and media, and retains the support of millions of
