Poland’s new Speaker turns parliament debates into a sensation

Katarzyna Kurkowska, 30, was one of the hundreds of people packed into a Warsaw cinema last month to watch a live feed of Poland’s latest blockbuster: the legislative endorsement of Donald Tusk’s return to premiership.

Many of her fellow movie-goers were also too young to vote in 2007, when Tusk first came to power. But they cheered for his promise of “historic change” and pledge to reinstall liberal values, after eight years of Law and Justice (PiS) party rule that included assaults on abortion rights and bitter feuding with Brussels over Poland’s eroding rule of law.

“I see a chance that Poland can change for good,” said Kurkowska at the December screening. She went to the cinema because she “wanted to feel the atmosphere. For the first time so many people speak the same language in Poland, especially people from my generation.”

Many other Poles have tuned in online to witness a political transition that has become a must-watch TV drama. The YouTube channel of the Sejm, the lower house of the Polish parliament, has attracted more than 650,000 subscribers, more than five times that of Germany’s Bundestag.

But while Tusk runs the government, the showman behind what has become known as Poland’s Sejmflix is the parliament’s new Speaker, Szymon Hołownia, who also leads the Poland 2050 party in the new governing coalition. He has tapped into excitement that has followed the October election, which had a record 74 per cent turnout.

Upon taking charge of the Sejm in November, Hołownia, 47, who used to host Poland’s version of the Got Talent television show, advised citizens to “stock up on popcorn” and watch more exciting and inspirational parliamentary debates than those held before.

His wit and spontaneity have also turned his own role as Speaker into a social media sensation, and he has drawn comparisons to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was also a TV star before switching to politics.

Hołownia told the Financial Times the Sejm was now “the most popular parliament in the world” because people yearned to witness the country’s expected legislative overhaul. The same voters who queued outside polling stations to defeat PiS in October now “want to see this change taking place, and in the Sejm it is happening before their eyes”, he said. 

The parliamentary session that voted in Tusk also drew 4.2mn views on YouTube, compared with 93,000 when the previous prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, addressed the Sejm after PiS won the elections in 2019.

But Morawiecki criticised Hołownia’s revival of the Sejm. “Politics is not a show, but a service to Poland and Poles,” he said in a video posted on social media last month.

Tusk’s three-way coalition has a combined majority of 248 of the Sejm’s 460 seats. But PiS remains the largest party with 194 seats, after winning 35 per cent of the votes in October.

Since the government changeover, PiS has shown it will fight hard against Tusk’s plans to remove PiS loyalists from every state institution, including within public broadcaster TVP. President Andrzej Duda has also sided with PiS to try to block the prime minister’s media reform.

Still, despite the deep polarisation of Polish politics and the PiS backlash against Tusk’s overhaul, Hołownia predicts the Sejm will be more open and constructive.

“From a parliament in which the opposition was treated with contempt, whose microphone was turned off, and where voting was repeated if the result was unsatisfactory for the executive power, we returned to the roots of parliamentarianism,” Hołownia said.

“I would like people to get into the habit of watching the Sejm proceedings, although I’m aware the current viewing figures will be difficult to maintain. A citizen keeping an eye on the authorities is the basis of democracy.” 

By raising the Sejm’s profile, Hołownia is also boosting his own chances of replacing Duda. He has made public his ambition to make a second bid for the presidency in 2025, having entered politics by standing in the 2020 presidential election, which was won by Duda and in which Hołownia came third.

Hołownia is now the most trusted politician in Poland, ahead of both Tusk and Duda, according to an Ibris opinion poll published in December by Polish news media Onet.

“Hołownia is the person because of whom I watch these [Sejm] proceedings,” said school teacher Zuzanna Solarska, who sat among the cinema audience. “Maybe he’s really a showman and he’s trying to use the spotlight to become president, but he’s doing a good job.”

Hołownia is also breathing fresh air into Polish politics because he was not directly entangled in the vitriolic and decades-old feud between Tusk, 66, and PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński, 74. In contrast, a handful of Tusk’s new ministers are longstanding loyalists who served in his previous cabinets.

Still, the Speaker’s rising popularity may create future tensions within the new prime minister’s unwieldy coalition.

“Donald Tusk is not somebody who likes to share power and he has now a difficult position with the partners in his coalition, Szymon Hołownia certainly being one of them,” Marcin Mastalerek, who heads Duda’s cabinet, said in an interview.

But in Warsaw’s cinema, the audience wanted to celebrate Poland’s political change rather than worry about Tusk’s next challenges.

Watching legislators swap Morawiecki for Tusk felt “like watching a match at the stadium or attending a concert”, said yoga teacher Sylwia Pietrasewicz. “The Sejm is back in fashion and this is heartwarming and uplifting.”