The presidential elections of October 2000 were another triumph for the post-communists, with Kwaśniewski winning in the first round with nearly 54 per cent of the vote, and Wałęsa failing to win a single percentage point. As the next parliamentary elections drew near, the disintegrating AWS alliance splintered. In the centre the Union of Freedom was replaced by the Citizens’ Platform (PO). On the right, a new party, the League of Polish Families (LPR), grew out of a number of traditionalist Catholic and nationalist groupings, and in the centre-right the Kaczyński brothers formed the Law and Justice party (PiS). But these new parties failed to stem the triumphant progress of the post-communists, who won over 40 per cent of the vote at the elections in September 2001. An alarming development was that the rabble-rousing Lepper’s Self-Defence party won over 10 per cent of the vote, and the League of Polish Families nearly 8.
A new government was formed under Leszek Miller, a man of the old order who had already been implicated in a number of shady financial deals during the previous spell of post-communist rule. He was perhaps a fitting figurehead for a time when a nationwide opinion poll revealed that no more than 28 per cent of the country’s inhabitants were satisfied with their lives and only 9 with their country. Levels of criminality had reached unprecedented heights, with the number of reported crimes more than doubling since 1990, and with organised crime reaching impressive proportions. Miller himself was mixed up in two corruption scandals, one relating to the media, the other to an oil company, and stepped down in May 2004. He was replaced by Marek Belka, who presided over the final stages of a regime that became synonymous with corruption and criminality. Its activities brought back on the agenda the question of calling people to account for crimes against the Polish people, and meant that the next election campaign would be fought on moral and ideological ground.
This signalled the end for the post-communist parties, with the SLD getting just over 11 and the PSL under 7 per cent of the vote. The winner was the Kaczyński twins’ Law and Justice party, closely followed by the Citizens’ Platform, and since they had campaigned on a similar ticket and had vowed to support each other after the elections, the fact that they had polled more than 50 per cent of the vote between them suggested that the country might expect four years of stable centre-right government.
The two parties began negotiations on a coalition, but strains appeared as the concurrent presidential elections loomed. When Lech Kaczyński beat the PO leader Donald Tusk, with 54 per cent of the vote to 45, the latter’s ill-concealed disappointment and his rival’s triumphalism aggravated disagreements on minor points of policy between the two parties. The Kaczyńskis formed a minority government under Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, with the tacit support of the populist Self-Defence, which had polled 15 per cent of the vote. Over the next months, PiS brought Lepper and the leader of the League of Polish Families into the coalition, thus isolating and offending the Citizens’ Platform, which it treated as a political rival. The move also alienated many within PiS, resulting in the protest resignation of Foreign Minister Stefan Meller and undermining its cohesion.
The inclusion of such elements in the coalition skewed the PiS programme to a populist left in matters concerning agriculture and local government and to an extreme traditionalist Catholic stand on the family, education and other areas of social policy. This only compounded a process of decline in the quality of its politics as Marcinkiewicz was shunted aside to make way for Jarosław Kaczyński, who became prime minister in July 2006, creating the bizarre situation of twin brothers holding the two highest offices in the land.
While the PiS government did achieve some notable success in curbing crime and corruption, it failed to tackle many other issues, and expended its energies on picking unnecessary quarrels with the opposition and creating a febrile atmosphere which drove people to take extreme positions. The issue of answerability for past crimes, or rather accusations of collaboration with the communist regime, was used as a political weapon to destroy rivals. The constant vicious infighting at the top created a mood of exasperation in the country at large, encouraging many younger people to escape by finding work abroad, contributing to an economic emigration of well over a million, despite the existence of jobs at home.
The Kaczyński brothers gave the impression of being increasingly embattled against various real or imaginary foes, and in a mood of mounting paranoia saw traitors in their own ranks, dismissing a number of their ablest ministers, such as the Defence Minister Radosław Sikorski. The coalition eventually fell apart in August 2007, leading to fresh elections in October.