The Polish elections, held on the first of June, resulted in conservative Karol Nawrocki beating liberal Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski by a very close margin.
“We will contact the PKW [National Electoral Comission] to clarify each of these cases,” Paprocka announced on Twitter.
Due to suspected irregularities, Paprocka appealed for electoral protests to be filed with the Supreme Court.
Responding to a request for comment from Euronews, PKW representatives stated that any irregularities must be reported to Poland’s Supreme Court by the 16th of June.
Karol Nawrocki won the second round of the presidential election by a difference of 369,451 votes, or by 1.19 percentage points.
In the June 1st Polish elections, conservative Karol Nawrocki narrowly defeated liberal Rafał Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw. Trzaskowki received 49.11 percent of the vote, while Nawrocki received 50.89 percent. Polish politicians have been requesting an investigation into the results, specifically from Trzaskowski’s camp.
Among those who have voiced concerns is Wiola Paprocka, the chief of staff to Rafał Trzaskowski, who wrote in some commissions about the unexpected reversal of support in the second round of the presidential election.
On Twitter, Paprocka declared, “We will get in touch with the PKW [National Electoral Commission] to get clarification on each of these cases.”. In her statement, she mentioned four polling places where anomalies have been reported.
Paprocka requested that electoral protests be submitted to the Supreme Court due to alleged irregularities.
Trzaskowski received 550 votes to win the first round of elections in one Kraków station. In contrast, Nawrocki finished third, behind Sławomir Mentzen, a hard-right candidate and Warsaw major. However, the official count indicated that Nawrocki had the most votes in the run-off, raising concerns about the count’s accuracy.
The Krakow district electoral commission is conducting an investigation into the case. The votes were not properly recorded in the minutes, according to a social media post by Jakub Kosek, the chairman of the Krakow City Council.
Kosek emphasized, “Based on what we now know, there was an error in the minutes – and the candidates’ results were switched.”.
Such “mistakes” surprised Krzysztof Gawkowski, the deputy prime minister and minister of digital affairs for Poland. “I am counting on this to be clarified, because as I myself looked at the results,” he stated.
Adding, “We have never had such cases in the past,”.
protesting the outcome.
Separately, the National Electoral Commission (PKW) dealt with it. When Euronews asked PKW representatives for comment, they said that any anomalies must be brought to the attention of Poland’s Supreme Court by June 16th.
“At this time, the Supreme Court can only confirm the district voting results in relation to the examination of election protests,” they told Euronews.
“This issue is too serious to ignore.”.
In an interview with Euronews, longtime electoral commission member Miłosz Motyka, a spokesman for the Polish Peasants’ Party, which is currently a part of Donald Tusk’s ruling coalition, stressed the importance of closely examining the problems of irregularities in the vote count.
“With multiple members of the electoral commission representing various political parties, municipalities, and city halls, there shouldn’t be a scenario where a result influences the election’s outcome in the end. “is incorrectly noted in the minutes,” he stated.
“This is too important a problem to ignore. For this reason, all of the information should be confirmed, and the PKW should always speak with the committee chairman in a proper manner. Verifying anomalies is the true goal here,” he continued.
“This is to create a myth of the victory that was to be taken away,” says Law and Justice.
Investigating irregularities is standard procedure, as Law and Justice MP Radosław Fogiel noted in an interview with Euronews. He did, however, stress that he disapproves of certain ruling coalition members’ behavior.
“The Civic Platform milieu” is “formulating these kinds of theses and this is a serious and dangerous matter,” he said, adding that “here, unfortunately, we are starting to deal with an organized action and the creation of a whole narrative of alleged falsification.”.
“I would say that the purpose of this is to create a myth about the victory that was to be claimed,” Fogiel told Euronews, assuming that there is a method to this madness and that it is not just the product of political paranoia.
Elections are evaluated by the OSCE mission.
In a statement, observers from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights jointly stated that the elections were held “professionally and efficiently.”. They believed that both rounds upheld the rights to peaceful assembly, association, and expression. However, they brought attention to both irregularities in campaign financing and bias in the media.
In the second round of the presidential election, Karol Nawrocki prevailed by a margin of 369,451 votes, or 1 point 19 percentage points. Since 1990, the candidates’ vote differences have been as small as they are now.
