Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Warsaw on Sunday to show support for candidates vying to win next week’s tightly-contested presidential election in Poland 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.
“Full determination is needed. Every vote is needed so that the future wins,” Trzaskowski told supporters who waved red and white Polish flag and European Union flags.
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’s efforts to tackle Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Trzaskowski, from Tusk’s ruling Civic Coalition (KO), narrowly led Karol Nawrocki, the candidate backed by the conservative-nationalist PiS in teh first round, by 31.4% to 29.5%, a much narrower gap than opinion polls had suggested.
Opinion polls suggest that the race between Trzaskowski and Nawrocki remains close ahead of the presidential runoff.
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