Winning conservative hearts and minds
Ziobro knows only too well that any second attempt to take over PiS (he tried and failed a decade earlier) needs to be successful or he risks political annihilation.
At one point in 2020 he proposed to Kaczynski to fully integrate United Poland into the PiS structures. The offer was rebuffed. Realising the road to the leadership of the Polish right cannot go through membership of PiS, Ziobro is heading down a different path: to win the hearts and minds of the conservative voters and PiS activists even without the endorsement of Kaczynski. In other words, to be more radical than PiS itself.
What this has meant in practice is to put himself at the forefront of the culture wars happening in Poland, becoming the figurehead of the ultra-conservative, hardline Catholic, nationalist movement fighting Brussels and its attempts to impose a socially liberal agenda on Poland. This has elevated him into the international headlines.
Since the summer of 2020, Ziobro has been battling on two fronts, being careful not to appear to be going against the PiS leader directly, instead targeting the new dauphin, moderate Prime Minister Morawiecki.
The first front is “gender ideology”. Ziobro wants Poland to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention on combating violence against women, which he and other arch-conservatives believe threatens the traditional family, and has been pushing an alternative treaty that bans abortion and homosexual marriage. The prime minister neatly sidestepped this issue over withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention by sending the matter to the Constitutional Tribunal for review.
In August 2020 Ziobro demanded the prime minister intervene when the European Commission announced that six Polish towns would lose EU funds because of their “LGBT free zones”. His Justice Ministry defended the towns’ “courage to demand our basic family values, freedom, tradition, who are today the subject of harassment and attacks by the European Commissioner [Helena Dalli]”. His prosecutors are now actively pursuing LGBT activists like Margot and Elzbieta Podlesna, who have been protesting LGBT hate speech in Poland.
The second front on which Ziobro has turned his firepower is the so-called “defence of sovereignty” from intrusion by EU institutions. Since July 2020, the EU’s rule-of-law conditionality, which links the distribution of EU funds from the European multi-annual budget to member states upholding fundamental values, has become the subject of major controversy for Ziobro and his United Poland.
It was Ziobro’s party that demanded the prime minister veto the July and December 2020 European Council meetings over the issue. Ziobro called Morawiecki a “crumbler”, suggesting he was too soft and unable to properly defend Polish national interests. Instead, Morawiecki reached a compromise deal endorsed also by Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban and Jaroslaw Kaczynski. Ziobro found himself on the brink of being forced out of the government.
This situation is dragging into 2021. Ziobro and his MPs voted against the ratification of the EU recovery fund because they argue it hands too much power to Brussels. He has openly accused the prime minister of implementing the policies of the opposition – yet remains a minister. This is only because without him, Kaczynski’s PiS would not enjoy a majority in the Sejm. Meanwhile, Morawiecki blocks some of Ziobro’s radical initiatives and even fired a United Poland deputy minister, Janusz Kowalski, one of the most outspoken critics of government policy.
Ziobro is playing a “Game of Thrones” in Warsaw. He is punching above his weight but, frustrated and alienated, he remains dangerous. His Hobbesian worldview is radically right-wing. He does not convey hope; his modus operandi is to create hate towards “the other” – ie, those who look different and think independently. This category includes judges, opposition politicians, journalists and activists. Progressive, international and European instruments are hostile because they cannot be controlled; the international left-wing agenda (so-called “gender ideology”) is a threat to the core of Polish identity, he believes.
At one point in 2020 Ziobro proposed controlling the NGO sector in the same way that civil organisations are controlled in Russia or Hungary. He had to be stopped by PiS, of all people.
Piotr Maciej Kaczynski is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Relations.
The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of BIRN.
