The Polish elections, held on the first of June, resulted in conservative Karol Nawrocki beating liberal Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski by a very close margin. Nawrocki won 50.89% of the vote against Trzaskowki’s 49.11%. Polish politicians, namely from Trzaskowski’s camp, have been asking for the results to be investigated.
Chief among these those expressing concerns is Rafał Trzaskowski’s chief of staff Wiola Paprocka, who wrote about the surprising reversal of support in the second round of the presidential election in some commissions.
“We will contact the PKW [National Electoral Comission] to clarify each of these cases,” Paprocka announced on Twitter. Her statement included four polling stations at which reports of irregularities have come to light.
Due to suspected irregularities, Paprocka appealed for electoral protests to be filed with the Supreme Court.
In one station in the city of Kraków, Trzaskowski won in the first round of elections, winning with 550 votes. Nawrocki, on the other hand, came in third place, after the Warsaw major and hard right candidate Sławomir Mentzen. In the run-off, however, Nawrocki received the most votes, according to the official count, prompting questions about the results of the count.
An investigation into the case is being carried out by the district electoral commission in Krakow. Krakow City Council chairman Jakub Kosek wrote in a post on social media that the votes had been incorrectly entered into the minutes.
“From what we know today, a mistake was made in the minutes – and the results of the candidates were swapped,” – Kosek emphasised.
Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Affairs Krzysztof Gawkowski expressed that he was surprised by such “mistakes”. “I am counting on this to be clarified, because as I myself looked at the results,” he said.
“We have never had such cases in the past,” he added.
Protesting the results
The National Electoral Commission (PKW) seperately addressed the matter. Responding to a request for comment from Euronews, PKW representatives stated that any irregularities must be reported to Poland’s Supreme Court by the 16th of June.
“Currently, the results of the district voting can only be verified by the Supreme Court in connection with the consideration of election protests,” they told Euronews.
‘To serious a matter to brush it aside’
A spokesman for the Polish Peasants’ Party (which is currently part of Donald Tusk’s ruling coalition) and long-time member of the electoral commissions Miłosz Motyka emphasized in an interview with Euronews that the issues of irregularities in the vote count should be carefully checked.
“There should not be a situation where, having several members of the electoral commission from different political formations, from municipalities, from city halls, we have a situation where a result that affects the final result [of the election – ed.] is wrongly recorded in the minutes”, he said.
“This is too serious a matter to simply brush aside. That is why any of this information should be verified and always the PKW should also conduct appropriate proceedings with the committee chairman. The aim here is really to verify irregularities”, he added.
Law and Justice: ‘This is to create a myth of the victory that was to be taken away’
Law and Justice MP Radosław Fogiel, pointed out in an interview with Euronews that it is standard procedure to investigate irregularities. However, he emphasized that he is critical of the actions of some members of the ruling coalition.
“Here, unfortunately, we are starting to deal with an organised action and the creation of a whole narrative of alleged falsification” he said, adding that “the Civic Platform milieu” is “formulating these kinds of theses and this is a serious and dangerous matter”.
“If I had to guess why someone would do this, assuming that there is a method in this madness and that it is not just the result of political paranoia, I would say that it is to serve the purpose of creating a myth about the victory that was to be claimed”, Fogiel told Euronews.
OSCE mission takes stock of the elections
Observers representing the joint mission of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe said in a statement that the elections were conducted “professionally and efficiently”. In their view, freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly were respected in both rounds. However, they drew attention to media bias as well as irregularities in campaign financing.
Karol Nawrocki won the second round of the presidential election by a difference of 369,451 votes, or by 1.19 percentage points. This is the smallest vote difference between the candidates since 1990.