Przemysław Czarnek, the former education minister for Law and Justice, has claimed he is in negotiations with PSL (the centrist rural-based party, currently a member of the ruling coalition) and Konfederacja. Konfederacja is a far-right party based on the core values of nationalism, libertarian economics and Catholic traditionalism.
Czarnek has been referred to recently as the "King of the Regions" for Law and Justice because of his success in the local elections in his own Lublin region. Wirtualna Polska spoke to an anonymous Law and Justice (PiS) member who said that Czarnek's success may lead to his promotion to a leadership role in the party that lost power in the October 2023 general election.
On the one hand, Czarnek has been one of the least popular public figures in Polish public life as several surveys have indicated, perhaps due to his combative style and unpopular legislative initiatives. On the other hand he has tried to reach out to other parties after Law and Justice and Jarosław Kaczyński in particular were criticised for burning bridges with other parties. (Despite coming first in the October 2023 elections, Law and Justice was unable to form a majority government.)
In an interview this week with RMF FM (especially from 4:40 on), Bosak has emphatically denied that his party, Konfederacja, is in any negotiations with Czarnek or Law and Justice. He referred deprecatingly to Czarnek's "media show" as an artificial attempt to attract attention and one not based in political fact.
Bosak has himself been caught between the horns of a political dilemma. He has followed the path of other European right-wing politicians like Giorgia Meloni and Marine Le Pen of moving from the far right to a more moderate right-wing and electable position. However, he has also been loyal to Grzegorz Braun, an extremist in the party. Bosak has consistently resisted alliances with Law and Justice, referred to in the RMF interview as "Czarnek's flirtation".
Negotiations following elections in Poland - referred to as "horse-trading" in English - are sometimes referred to more pejoratively in Polish, with the terms "sharing the loot" ["łup polityczny"] and even "political corruption".
Sources: RMF, wp.pl, polsatnews.pl, gazeta.pl, glos nauczycielski
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