Donald Tusk, a man with an eclectic identity, returns to power in Poland

Just minutes after Donald Tusk made his triumphant return as leader of Poland, his nemesis took to the podium in parliament to rain acid on his parade.

“I don’t know who your grandfathers were, but I know one thing: you are a German agent, just a German agent,” growled Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the chairman of Law and Justice, the right-wing party that was in charge until Monday. had all the power in his hands.

The accusation, one of many smears against Mr Tusk over a political career dating back to the 1980s, came after Parliament backed Mr Tusk as prime minister, sparking joy and relief among Polish liberals and pro-European centrists.

The attack reflected the no-holds-barred approach to Polish politics after eight years of Law and Justice. But it also highlighted the difficulties for many in Poland to determine who their country’s next leader is and where he stands.

In a country that has been largely monoethnic and monolingual since the end of World War II, Mr. Tusk stands out as a man of eclectic identities, interests and linguistic talents.

He has described himself as having four parallel identities: a proud son of Gdansk, the former German port city of Danzig on the Baltic Sea; a Kashubian, an ethnic minority from Northern Poland with its own language and traditions; a Pole and a European.

He speaks Polish, Kashubian, German and English, a language he barely knew when he took a break from Polish politics in 2014 to take a senior job in Brussels, but which he quickly mastered.

That being Polish, Mr Tusk said in 2014 when he became president of the European Council, the EU’s main center of power, is “my main identity”, but the others matter too – a position that Mr Kaczynski and others Polish nationalists baffled. who regard loyalty to the Polish state as indivisible.

Riina Kionka, an Estonian diplomat who advised Mr Tusk in Brussels, remembers him as both a “passionate European” and a “proud Pole determined to lead his country.”

Mr. Tusk always had “both feet firmly on the ground” and sought compromise rather than total victory, she said. “He always said to us, ‘It’s better to have part of something than nothing at all.’”

This aversion to all-or-nothing dogmatism led some to question the beliefs of a politician who began his career in a circle of radical free-market believers, but who during the recent Polish campaign promised to maintain a range of social benefits provided by the law had been introduced. and Justice.

When asked in 2013 whether he had changed his previous views, he quoted Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski, a former Marxist who, after leaving Poland, became a sharp critic of communism and described himself as a “liberal-conservative socialist ‘. That, Mr. Tusk said, described his own views.

“He is a political cherry-picker,” says Jarolaw Kruisz, the author of a recent book, “The New Politics of Poland.” He added: “He takes what he sees as the best bits from every part of the spectrum.”

Mr. Tusk has been active in politics for more than 40 years, starting out as a youth activist and journalist at Solidarity, born in Gdansk. After the collapse of communism, he won two consecutive terms as prime minister, although he shortened the second to take the Brussels position.

The job that perhaps best prepared him for his current role, combining the implacable hostility of Law and Justice and the tensions within its diverse alliance of supporters, was one he took on in Gdansk in the 1980s, after the communist authorities had imposed martial law.

Unable to find steady work after a brief arrest, he took to climbing chimneys and tall buildings with mountaineering equipment to paint or repair them.

This “high-altitude work,” Mr. Tusk later recalled, meant he was a “mad alpinist” and equipped him to balance results and risks, a useful political skill.

Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, leader of Poland’s Peasant Party and Mr Tusk’s candidate for defense minister, praised him on Monday for taking the risk of leaving Brussels to return to Polish politics in 2021. Justice.

“He showed courage in leaving a comfortable life,” he said. “He left lucrative posts and came back here.”

Mr. Tusk’s flexibility has alarmed some progressives. They despise Law and Justice, but complain that Mr Tusk has not sided more forcefully on issues such as abortion, which the outgoing government imposed a near-total ban and which Mr Tusk failed to liberalize during his premiership.

Mr. Tusk declared women’s rights “No. 1 issue” in Poland this year, but before the general election removed from his party’s candidate list an activist who called for allowing abortion at any stage of pregnancy, a position that risks alienating voters. brought along.

His party, Civic Coalition, wants to liberalize Poland’s strict abortion law, but only allow abortion up to the twelfth week of pregnancy.

Zuzanna Dąbrowska, a veteran political journalist, said Mr Tusk deserved credit for tackling an issue that most politicians avoided. “The majority in Poland shares the same opinion that abortion policy should be more liberal. But politicians have done everything they can to avoid this reality.”

To become prime minister, Mr Tusk has brought together a series of disparate opposition parties that together won a clear majority of seats in parliament, and on Monday joined forces to reject the Law and Justice candidate as prime minister and appoint Mr Tusk to select. These include a left-wing group, the center-right Polish Peasant Party and hardline free-market liberals.

“To be a good prime minister you have to be everything, but sometimes you cannot combine water and fire,” said Bartosz Rydlinski, a political scientist at Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw. “You can’t have low taxes and an effective welfare state. This is Tusk’s biggest challenge.”

A fan of Miles Davis who studied history at university, Mr. Tusk has sometimes alienated potential voters, especially the more traditionally minded voters in small rural towns and villages, with what they see as arrogant aloofness.

Mr Tusk offended millions of Poles in 2005 by dismissing conservatives as a “mohair coalition” – a reference to the berets that many older women wear in church. Mr. Tusk apologized but struggled for years to shake the image of haughty contempt.

He has since spoken about growing up in what he describes as “poverty” in Gdansk, especially after his father, a carpenter, died when he was 14, and how he interacted with street boys. His older sister, he says, helped him straighten out.

As a university student and then as a journalist and youth activist with Solidarity, he embraced the free market economy. He helped found and lead the Liberal Democratic Congress, a group of anti-communist free marketers, and after the election of Solidarity leader Lech Walesa as president in 1990, he was involved in managing the privatization of state assets.

Widespread public dissatisfaction with economic “shock therapy” crushed his early political ambitions. His party’s defeat in the 1993 elections dampened his faith in free-market orthodoxy.

“He realized that he had to follow the political currents and adapt to reality,” Ms. Dąbrowska said. “He has been doing this ever since: adapting his views and himself to political reality.”

After withdrawing from politics for four years to write books, he won a seat in the Polish Senate and then helped found Civic Platform, a liberal party. He became prime minister after the party won elections in 2007, and served a second time after another victory in 2011.

He boasted after his second victory that “we have no one left to lose to” and, to the dismay of many supporters, left for Brussels before completing his second term.

A year after his departure, Law and Justice defeated his party in parliamentary elections and won a landslide victory in a presidential race. “He was arrogant and misjudged the situation,” Mr Kuisz said.

But Law and Justice recently made the same mistake, misjudging Mr Tusk’s ability and willingness to reach mainstream voters after seven years in Brussels.

“He was presented as an exalted liberal and came back unsure of his success but determined to fight,” Mr. Kuisz said. “From Brussels he was suddenly involved in fundamental basic politics everywhere in small towns and villages.”