Poland Duda victory: Why have Poles voted for change?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-32876695

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Poland has enjoyed almost uninterrupted economic growth for the past 25 years and was the only EU member state to avoid a recession following the financial crisis.

It is a young but stable democracy that has grown increasingly confident on the European stage. Both its cities and countryside are being transformed by billions of euros from Brussels.

So why have Poles just voted for change, choosing conservative candidate Andrzej Duda, 43, as their next president?

Out of touch

Poland is catching up with Western European living standards but it is still poorer.

Public health care is underfunded and the tax system disproportionately hurts the less well off.

It is difficult to combine parenting with work because of the lack of childcare facilities and young graduates often find it hard to get a job to match their skills.

Youth unemployment, at 24%, is well above the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average and Poles know they can earn much more in Germany and the UK. More than two million Poles have left the country since Poland joined the EU in 2004.

There is also a sense among the youngest voters that politicians are out of touch.

That's why Pawel Kukiz, a former rock musician who once fronted a band called Breasts, won 20% of the vote in the first round of the elections by offering to rejuvenate Polish politics.

In the second round, Andrzej Duda, a new, untainted face who was just 17 when communism collapsed in 1989, successfully mined that dissatisfaction to his profit.

The 43-year-old MEP from the socially conservative but economically left-wing Law and Justice Party defeated a popular president who, just two months ago, looked like he was coasting to a second term.

Addressing the concerns of both young and old he promised to raise salaries and revoke an unpopular law that increases the retirement age to 67. He pledged more support for farmers and pointed to the poisonous impact of corruption on political elites.

He acknowledged the financial concerns of young parents, offering payments to those who have larger families.

He scored most highly among Law and Justice's traditional electorate in Poland's poorer eastern provinces. But he also picked up votes among the young.

There were missteps in his campaign, such as when he criticised President Bronislaw Komorowski for his failure to defend Poland's reputation over the Jedwabne pogrom during World War Two.

In 1941, Polish villagers in Jedwabne, perhaps at the instigation of the Nazis, rounded up more than 300 of their Jewish neighbours and burned them alive in a barn.

Mr Duda's point was to criticise those who quite wrongly state that Poland collaborated with the Nazis - as FBI chief James Comey did recently - but his example was an ill-judged one.

Mr Duda comes from Krakow, Poland's conservative, medieval jewel that, for half of his life, was home to Karol Wojtyla, who became Pope John Paul II.

A keen scout during his teenage years, Mr Duda went on to study law at the city's Jagiellonian University, where he married Agata, his school sweetheart. The couple have a 20-year-daughter called Kinga.

Mr Duda is a patriot and firm believer in the country's alliance with the US and wants permanent Nato bases in Poland. On Europe, he says Poland must defend its national interests and should not adopt the euro.

He also supports the reinvigoration of Polish industry, which is based on domestic but heavily polluting coal reserves, even if that means withdrawing from the EU's climate policy.

Like many Poles he is socially conservative. He is a practising Roman Catholic who opposes abortion, same-sex marriage and in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment.

In 2012, he supported a bill that proposed jailing doctors who administered the treatment. Poland's bishops were one of the first groups to congratulate him.