“In Poland, the election campaign for the presidential elections scheduled for May 2025 has already started. The ruling party coalition and opposition parties held primaries for their presidential candidates. The mayor of Warsaw, Rafal Tszaskowski, and the representative of the opposition, Karol Nawrocki, will compete for the post of head of state. Briefly about – about who became applicants for the highest position in Poland and […]”, — write: businessua.com.ua
In Poland, the election campaign for the presidential elections scheduled for May 2025 has already started. The ruling party coalition and opposition parties held primaries for their presidential candidates.
The mayor of Warsaw, Rafal Tszaskowski, and the representative of the opposition, Karol Nawrocki, will compete for the post of head of state. Briefly about – about who became applicants for the highest position in Poland and what Ukraine should expect from them.
Elections in a new wayPrimaries (the term comes from the English primaries, primary elections within parties is a new phenomenon for Poland. The “Civic Coalition” of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who is currently ruling in Poland, held the primaries by telephone. Activists of the parties that are part of the “Civic Coalition” voted using secure SMS. Warsaw mayor Rafal Tszaskowski became the candidate for the presidency of Poland from this force. According to the results of the primaries, he received three-quarters of the party’s votes, overtaking his competitor – Minister of Foreign Affairs Radoslav Sikorskyi.
For his part, Radoslav Sikorsky called on all those who voted for him to “unconditionally support Rafal Tshaskovsky.” And now the approved presidential candidate has to submit his election program on December 7.
A pro-European politician has been declared by the authoritiesRafal Tshaskovskyi is 52 years old, and he has already accomplished a lot in his political career. In 2009-2013 was a member of the European Parliament, is considered an authoritative specialist in the field of EU affairs. Doctor of humanities.
He worked in various positions in the Polish government, was a member of the Seimas. Since 2018, he has been the mayor of Warsaw. Since 2020, the vice-chairman of the “Civic Coalition” party. On May 15, 2020, he was elected as a candidate for the presidency of Poland from the “Civil Coalition”. On June 28, 2020, he won 30.34% of the votes in the first round and entered the second round together with Andrzej Duda (43.67%), where he lost to the incumbent president with a margin of less than 2%.
Regarding Ukraine, Rafal Tshaskovskyi takes the same position as the ruling coalition – supporting Ukraine and criticizing Russia. During his visit to Kyiv in 2023, he said that everything Russia is doing in Ukraine “is genocide.” But he also supports historical claims to Kyiv, although not to the same extent as the right-wing opposition party “Law and Justice”.
As the mayor of Warsaw, Tszaskowski showed himself to be a politician free from limits: he supported sexual minorities, signed a declaration with social requirements for the LGBT community in the capital, and was also one of the “chiefs” of the Equality parade, which caused criticism from the right wing, the newspaper reports. Daieje.
Rafal Tshaskovsky knows five foreign languages: English, French, Spanish, Russian and Italian. He also spoke many times about his passion for books. He and his wife Malgozhata have two children: 20-year-old Oleksandra and 15-year-old Stanislav. The family has a French bulldog nicknamed Bonbel.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk congratulates the winner of the primaries from the “Civic Coalition” Rafal Tshaskovsky. Photo: FB Rafal Tshakovsky
The opposition candidate is a non-partisan historianPoland’s main opposition party “Law and Justice” has also decided on a candidate for the post of the country’s president. He became Karol Navrotskyi. According to the Polish media, he will run as a non-party candidate, and PiS will support him.
The head of “PiS” Yaroslav Kaczyński explained that Navrotskyi was chosen primarily because of his personal qualities, as well as because of “the situation in which Poland is now.” According to Kaczynski, the country is currently in an “internal, Polish-Polish war”, and therefore the country needs a person who deserves trust, regardless of the political formation.
41-year-old Karol Navrotsky is a historian, public figure and local official. From 2017 to 2021, Nawrocki was the director of the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk, and from 2021 he heads the Institute of National Remembrance.
While serving as director of the World War II Museum in Gdańsk, Nawrocki changed its main exhibit to emphasize the extent of the suffering and history of Poles who defended Jews during the Holocaust. This led to lawsuits against him by the creators of the museum.
And about a month ago, commenting on the issue of the exhumation of the victims of the Volyn tragedy, Navrotsky called Halychyna “Lesser Poland”, this was written by People’s Deputy and ex-head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance Volodymyr Vyatrovych.
“Galichyna was called this term only for a short period of 1922-1939. And the reason for its introduction was exclusively political. Thus, Ukrainian Halychyna was included in the all-Polish narrative, its Ukrainianness was erased. Of course, they did it not only with a name, but also with a systematic policy of Polonization of education, culture, and social support of Polish immigrants.
The term “Eastern Lesser Poland” currently used by the director of the IPN is not about honoring the memory of the Poles who died here. And, unfortunately, about the lost territories that never became Polish,” Vyatrovych commented.
It is also known about Navrotsky that he is fond of boxing at the amateur level. Together with his wife Marta, they raised three children: two sons, Daniel and Antony, and a daughter, Katarzyna.
Karol Navrotsky positions himself as an ardent anti-communist and an enemy of Russia. Photo: facebook.com/ipngovpl
Opinion poll: Poles against the opposition candidateA year before the elections, all polls show that the candidate for the presidency of Poland from the authorities is winning over the opposition. According to a poll by the Polish Center for the Study of Public Opinion (CBOS), support for Tszaskowski in the event of a second-round clash with the candidate from Law and Justice is approximately 50- 53% with a margin of 20-25 percentage points. CBOS respondents also highlighted who they believe has the best chance of winning Poland’s presidential election next year. The leader of the rating is now Rafal Tshaskovskyi (38%).
By the way
Holding the primaries was the idea of one of the participants – Rafal Tszaskowski, the mayor of the Polish capital. He stated that in the conditions of strong competition with the current opposition party “Law and Justice”, the strongest candidate who has “one hundred percent support” of his party members should be nominated.
Source: kp.ua