Politics Lawyer Czarnek to lead Poland's PiS into the parliamentary elections
The Polish opposition party Law and Justice (PiS) has chosen the former Minister of Education and Science, Przemyslaw Czarnek, as its candidate for head of government. This was announced by party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski on Saturday at the PiS party conference in Krakow. The 48-year-old law professor is to lead the PiS, which will dominate Poland for years until the fall of 2023, into the parliamentary elections in the fall of 2027. The PiS must win this election and Czarnek is the right man for the job, said Kaczynski.
07.03.2026, 16:30
SDA
Czarnek is considered a right-wing hardliner within his party. In 2020, he said of the LGBT community: "These people are not equal to normal people." He later apologized for this, explaining that he had not meant to hurt anyone. His nomination as a candidate for prime minister shows that Kaczynski is speculating on winning over voters from the radical right-wing Konfederacja and the party of anti-Semite Grzegorz Braun. Czarnek recently replied to the question of his position on a coalition with the ultra-right: "Anything is possible."
For the "true Poland"
In his inaugural speech following the announcement of his nomination, Czarnek criticized Prime Minister Donald Tusk's pro-European government for alienating ordinary people from their own state. "We want to take care of the authentic Poland, this true Poland, which we want to give back to the Poles so that the normal, ordinary Pole can once again be a citizen of his own state," the PAP news agency quoted him as saying.
The 76-year-old party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski is still pulling the strings of Poland's right-wing conservatives. The PiS is currently at a low in the polls - its support is at 22 percent of voters.
