Former EU chief Donald Tusk, leader of the Polish opposition that is tipped to have won a majority in Sunday’s elections (15 October), is a football-mad historian with roots in the anti-communist movement.
The 66-year-old former prime minister plunged back into Polish politics as head of the centrist Civic Platform party after returning from a stint in Brussels.
Tusk: I will ‘do everything’ to keep Poland in the EU
Former Polish prime minister Donald Tusk has said that he would “do everything” to keep Poland in the EU in his first TV interview after returning to Polish politics.
Speaking on Friday night on private broadcaster TVN24, the former chief of the European …
President of the European Council until 2019, he handled crises including migration, Greece’s economic plight and tough Brexit negotiations.
After learning English from scratch for the post, he went on to win a reputation for plain speaking with a penchant for colourful phrasing.
Of Brexit, he warned “there will be no cakes on the table for anyone, there will be only salt and vinegar”.
Until last year, he served as head of Europe’s top political grouping, the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP).
Active on social media, Tusk frequently takes shots at his Polish arch-rival, the governing right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party of Jarosław Kaczyński.
He has notably criticised Kaczyński and Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki over double-digit inflation, the tightening of abortion laws and a visa fraud scandal.
On 1 October, he brought hundreds of thousands of government opponents into the streets in what supporters said was the biggest demonstration ever in the Polish capital Warsaw.
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Hundreds of thousands of people held an opposition rally in Warsaw on Sunday (1 October), two weeks ahead of an election that the liberal Civic Platform (PO) says may decide Poland’s future in the European Union and its democratic standing.
Bitter enmity
Tusk and Kaczyński are bitter enemies, with Kaczyński accusing Tusk of “moral responsibility” for the death of his twin brother Lech, who was president at the time, in an air crash in Russia in 2010.
Tusk was prime minister when the crash wiped out a large chunk of the Polish establishment on the way to Smolensk to mark the murder of thousands of Poles by Soviet secret police during World War II.
Polish and Russian investigators found that pilot error, bad weather and poor air-traffic control were to blame.
But conservatives have accused Tusk’s government of negligence in preparations for the presidential visit and shortcomings in the investigation.
More recently, amid Russia’s invasion of neighbouring Ukraine, Poland’s conservatives have gone after Tusk for signing gas deals with Russia while he was premier.
The PiS set up a committee with the stated goal of investigating citizens who may have succumbed to Russian influence.
Critics argued the measure, introduced just before the election, would be used to target Tusk. His party even dubbed it the “Lex Tusk”, or Tusk Law.
Conservatives have also accused him of being soft on Germany, with Kaczyński suggesting that Berlin wanted to interfere in the election campaign and install Tusk as prime minister.
As under Kaczyński Poland is in a collision course with the EU over rule of Law, Tusk is seen as the politician able to change course and avoid ‘Polexit’.
Poles pin hopes on Tusk to prevent EU exit
On Sunday (10 October), some 200,000 people in 126 towns and cities across Poland, the rest of Europe and the world demonstrated against last week’s decision of Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal that ruled EU basic treaties are partially illegal.
In Warsaw, up …
Chimney painting
Tusk’s roots as a fighter go back to his upbringing in Gdansk on the Baltic Sea.
“As a young man, I was a typical hooligan… We would roam the streets, you know, cruising for a bruising” after football matches, he once told The Financial Times.
Football continues to be an obsession, with Tusk able to rattle off match results from major tournaments decades ago.
Gdansk later became the cradle of the Solidarity movement, and it was here that Tusk forged his credentials as something of a Cold War warrior.
A trade unionist, journalist and historian, he also ran a modest industrial painting business under communism. Private enterprise was rare then, but small ventures were tolerated.
“It’s by painting all sorts of industrial sites, chimneys and bridges that he learned about the market economy,” long-time friend Jerzy Borowczak told AFP.
After communism fell, Tusk and others formed a liberal party, pushing for sweeping privatisation of the state-run economy. In 2001, he co-founded Civic Platform.
He took power in 2007 from the Kaczyński twins and served until leaving for Brussels in 2014.
As premier, Tusk had the distinction of steering Poland through the global financial crisis as the only EU state to maintain growth.
He is married to Malgorzata Tusk, a historian, and has two adult children, including a daughter who is a well-known fashion blogger.
Tusk is a proud Kashubian, a Slav minority from the Gdansk region. He discovered his roots as an adult, prompting him to learn the language.
(Edited by Georgi Gotev)
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