CNN
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A historian and populist firebrand who boasted about his brawls with soccer hooligans has narrowly gained Poland’s presidential election, in a political upset that would torpedo the centrist authorities’s efforts to unspool the legacy of authoritarianism within the nation.
Karol Nawrocki, the candidate aligned with Poland’s right-wing populist Legislation and Justice (PiS) celebration, gained 50.89% of the vote, defeating the liberal mayor of Warsaw Rafał Trzaskowski – lengthy the favourite to win – in a head-to-head run-off.
The end result extends PiS’ 10-year occupancy of the presidential palace and will spell catastrophe for Prime Minister Donald Tusk, whose pledge to erase PiS’ fingerprints from Poland’s embattled establishments noticed him conflict repeatedly with the outgoing President Andrzej Duda.
Nawrocki is a champion of US President Donald Trump and visited the White Home within the weeks earlier than the election. He was the underdog all through the marketing campaign, however got here a detailed second to Trzaskowski within the first spherical of voting two weeks in the past, having survived a series of damaging stories about his previous. He picked up a late endorsement from the third-placed, far-right candidate.
The 42-year-old historian will now yield the vastly highly effective presidential veto, which Duda used steadily to thwart Tusk’s agenda. The European Union has seemed to Tusk for a blueprint on undoing the consequences of populism on a democracy – however a victory for Nawrocki was not a part of the plan.
Although Polish presidential candidates typically stand as people, relatively than representatives of a celebration, there’s little hiding their affiliations, and every main celebration traditionally endorses and campaigns for a candidate.
Tusk ousted PiS from authorities in a heated parliamentary election in 2023, however Nawrocki’s victory denies him an open street to totally undo the transformation of the Polish state overseen by PiS throughout an eight-year stint in authorities.
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