500,000 Poles Protest Against Conservative Government: A First-Hand Account

2023-06-05 15:04:51

Monika was one of around 500,000 Poles who took to the streets of Warsaw yesterday. It was, however, his birthday. But for her, there was no question of spending it other than by participating in this demonstration: “When I see everything my parents fought for for years crumble, I can’t remain indifferent and inert“, she writes to us.

For a few years and more exactly since PIS (Editor’s note: this is the Law and Justice party, a conservative right-wing party) is in power, we are participating in a real madness…

Monika gives us some examples of what she calls the current madness: the very restrictive Polish policy on abortion or the omnipotence of the Minister of Justice, “who is at the same time Attorney General!”. She concludes with these words: “we are fed up with this situation, with the manipulation of public opinion by false information regarding what is really happening in our country.”

It should be said that yesterday, the Polish public television, the TVP, did not diffuse images of this demonstration. As written by Poland Newsweekwe might see a direct report from the seaside, where Poles are leaving in droves thanks to government programs, a live broadcast of the first national parade of circles of rural housewives, in which Marshal Witek performed, or a speech by Jacek Sasin, opening the Poland festival from Łomża’s kitchen”. Amazing? Not so much when you know that the TVP is under the control of the current Conservative government.

Yesterday’s protesters clearly want an end to the era of the ruling PIS party in 2015. The scale of the protest, believed to be the largest since the fall of the communist regime in 1989, gives them cause for hope. But their hope must be nuanced.

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