Consider the following three-scene play: In the first scene, it is Oct. 10. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the soon-to-be-deposed little “big man” of Poland’s populist ruling party, Law and Justice (PiS), does what he does on the 10th day of every month. He lays flowers at the monument commemorating his twin brother, then-president Lech Kaczynski, and 95 others who died when their plane tried to land in thick fog at Smolensk airfield in Russia, in April 2010.
Meanwhile, Zbigniew Komosa, a Polish entrepreneur who carries out a similar ritual on the tenth day of every month, lays a wreath commemorating the victims of the crash, but pinned to his offering is a note that reads: “In memory of the 95 victims of Lech Kaczynski, who, ignoring all regulations, ordered the pilots to land in extremely hazardous conditions. May you rest in peace.”
Every month, Kaczynski has had Komosa’s wreath removed. This time, however, the police attending Kaczynski are somehow less eager to do so, and Kaczynski must do it himself. He tears the note off and carries the wreath away from the monument to cries of “thief” from Komosa and a friend who is filming the entire incident. Kaczynski then demands that the police arrest the wreath-layers or at least take down their names, while Komosa demands that they arrest Kaczynski for stealing private property.
The scene lasts about ten minutes as an increasingly frustrated Kaczynski tells the police that he is ordering them as the minister for security (a position he no longer holds) to arrest Komosa. Eventually, Kaczynski resorts to ringing a police commandant personally, but still to no avail.
In scene two, it is Sunday, Oct. 15: Election Day. Kaczynski, not an early riser, shows up late in the day to vote. The polling station is crowded, because voter turnout is higher than in any election since the fall of communism. Accompanied by his security detail, Kaczynski is astonished to be told by those in line that he is not permitted to jump the queue, and that he should go to the back to wait his turn. The scene is especially striking because, as everyone knows, elderly voters are often allowed ahead as a matter of courtesy.
In scene three, it is Nov. 13: The first session of the newly elected parliament, where four democratic opposition parties command a large majority. Since 2016, the parliament building has been surrounded by crowd-control barriers, reinforced by a strong police presence, but as this session commences, members of the public remove the barriers and stack them tidily to one side, while the police look on.
There is no storming of the parliament to worry about. The crowd is there to support the peaceful transfer of power, not to prevent it.
However, viewers of the play should know that this is not how the Polish police normally behaved during PiS’ eight-year rule. For example, law enforcement responded brutally to women marching in protest against Poland’s total ban on abortion in 2020; at the time, Kaczynski wanted to use the army to suppress the protests.
What conclusions can we draw from this drama? First, the authority to use violence or force can evaporate unexpectedly and very quickly, sometimes even before an election loss, and long before a formal transfer of power. After all, the new democratic government, led by former European Council president and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, is unlikely to be sworn in before Dec. 13 — a full month after the events of scene three, and two months after scene two, when Kaczynski was told to go to the back of the line.
Something similar happened in Russia during Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny. No one stood in the way of his “march on Moscow” — on the contrary, many ordinary Russians cheered him on — and the effort probably failed only because Prigozhin had not thought through what he would do if he took Moscow.
Second, in fledgling authoritarian regimes, many of those tied to the “apparatus of repression” will not yet have committed crimes on behalf of those in power. Even if there is only a small outside chance of democracy returning, they could remain unwilling to stick out their own necks, and the law could retain some force.
We saw this during the wreath-laying incident: The man filming the scene kept demanding that the police explain which article of the criminal code authorized them to order him to leave. In the end, they pushed him back a bit, but not so far as to prevent him from annoying Kaczynski.
The moral of the story, then, is that the longer authoritarians are in power, the more likely they are to stay in power by implementing policies and procedures to make it less likely that ordinary people could challenge their authority. For example, when Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) turn up at their neighborhood polling stations, other voters, like those Kaczynski encountered, are kept away. When authoritarian regimes are consolidating themselves, time is not on the side of the forces of democracy.
Jacek Rostowski is a former Polish minister of finance and deputy prime minister.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
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