Paweł Daroszewski
In May 2020, Poland faced an unprecedented situation. For the first time in history, the elections were postponed without any clear legal grounds. The presidential election ordered by the Marshal of the Sejm should have taken place on May 10, 2020. However, a combination of the epidemic and political and legal circumstances led to the interruption of the election process, including the failure to open polling stations. This state of affairs was confirmed in Resolution No. 129/2020 by the State Electoral Commission (SEC). The SEC said it was not possible to vote for the candidates. According to the SEC, this had the same effects as described in Article 293 § 3 of the Electoral Code, which states that voting cannot be held due to the lack of candidates.
The first association evoked by the described situation is that the elections did not take place because of the pandemic. The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic was a new and long unknown threat. It was necessary to limit social contacts and introduce various types of bans. In such circumstances, it is difficult to efficiently organize such large events as general elections. However, this is only a superficial justification. First, the relevant constitutional organs of the state decided not to introduce a state of natural disaster or a state of emergency. Constitutional emergency procedures have not been launched. This is important because, according to the Polish Constitution, no elections can be held in Poland during emergency measures and 90 days after their end. Moreover, the next election date was set by the Marshal of the Sejm for June 28, 2020. It was a date very close to May 10, and yet the elections were managed without major organizational disruptions. During the election campaign, the candidates met with voters at rallies. The accumulation of people in such large clusters was dangerous due to the spread of the disease. Nevertheless, neither the SEC nor representatives of the ruling party demanded that the election date be rescheduled. The organizational difficulties that prevented the holding of the elections on May 10 were largely due to the numerous and profound changes to the electoral law. The decisive factor was the political factor, as politicians from the ruling party first tried to find a way to hold elections at a time when they should have declared the state of emergency or state of natural disaster, and then agreed that the election date would be postponed through an unknown procedure, which was then confirmed by the SEC.
Currently, we are dealing with a similar situation in Poland. On the 29 September 2022, the Sejm passed the act which postpones the date of local elections by six months. So far, the date of the next local elections should be set in the fall of 2023. This date is a consequence of the 5-year term of office of local government bodies, which was extended in 2018. If the act passed by the Sejm does not enter into force, local elections will be held close to the next parliamentary elections, which, according to the Constitution, take place in the fall of 2023. However, this is a politically unfavorable situation for the ruling party because the opposition parties have the political advantage in the local government elections. The official justification for postponing local elections is the coincidence of election campaign dates and organizational difficulties related to the necessity to appoint election commissions in local and parliamentary elections in a similar period. The majority of the Sejm members decided that local elections are too difficult to hold. One may not consider this explanation as credible, as the new date of local elections will coincide with the date of elections to the European Parliament. This situation shows that the precedent of rescheduling the presidential election in 2020 is being used to manipulate the election date.
October 2022
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The views expressed above belong to the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Centre for Social Sciences.