Vucic has stated that EU membership is the way for Serbians to benefit from the EU-wide prosperity and to maintain close economic relations.
But with them getting military hardware from certain (non-EU/US) countries and their troops/gendarmes doing certain things near Kosovar borders, it's putting up more questions for Brussels regarding their membership.
So, the turnout at the Polish elections turned to be a whooping 72% according to Ipsos, and exit polls project that while Pi S is still the largest party, the opposition parties may gain enough seats to form a coalition.
Which if true, then the Pi S really pissed people off. Not just in Poland, but even probably people overseas because of reported big turnouts of the Polish diaspora in places like Ireland and Australia.
"Cynicism is not realistic and tough. It's unrealistic and kind of cowardly because it means you don't have to try."I'm gonna keep my shirt on until at least late poll.
I think the opposition parties uniting is a foregone conclusion. They knew from the start that none of them will be able to govern without all of them working together, so hopefully they're not without a plan.
The biggest unknown in this equation is PiS's president. Even assuming the best case scenario for the opposition in this election, two years of nothing but shenanigans may ensue.
The state of TV Tropes.Third place is said to be TD, which is also another opposition party so yeah.
Two exit polls so far show Pi S with a decreased number of seats while the opposition gains many.
"Cynicism is not realistic and tough. It's unrealistic and kind of cowardly because it means you don't have to try."![]()
They are and they know it.
It's also likely that they were the one who sucked up most of the voters who were disillusioned with PiS enough to stop voting for them (previous polls awarded them much less voting share, which suggests that most people "undecided" until the election day went for them).
So if they don't consider their policies carefully, these people may trickle right back to PiS.
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Duda won't be able to run in 2025, he's out of his two turns.
Edited by StyxD on Oct 15th 2023 at 11:40:08 AM
The state of TV Tropes.
Do you mean the voters or the party getting too reactionary?
Well, we can only guess, but I think there were two things primarily.
- The 2020 abortion ban was probably the start of PiS's downwards spiral. It turned out even for many conservatives this was too much.
- This year, corruption scandals coming from PiS got absolutely unhinged. Primarily the visa scandal (mentioned in this thread before) meant that the common racist was no longer sure they should vote for PiS.
Edited by StyxD on Oct 15th 2023 at 11:56:14 AM
The state of TV Tropes.
I wouldn't exactly bet on PIS voters being turned off; if anything, these scandals and changes have motivated the non-PIS voting crowd to actually go out and vote. Unfortunately, it takes fascism getting nice and cozy in the country before people will actually go to oppose it.
Regardless, we have the late polls. These aren't official results yet, but they are more indicative of the overall score:
- PIS - 36.6% (198 seats in Sejm)
- KO - 31% (161)
- Trzecia Droga - 13.5% (57)
- Nowa Lewica - 8.6% (30)
- Konfederacja - 6.4% (14)
To rule Sejm, a group of choice needs at least 231 seats. PIS, even in combination with Konfederacja, does not meet the requirement at 212 seats; the remaining opposition has 248 seats, and would therefore rule despite PIS winning the overall score.
President Duda already said he's going to give PIS a shot at making a government, which is poised to fail - but repeated attempts may take weeks or months before they give up or, God forbid, someone from opposition breaks out to join them.
...but... maybe it's the end of the long night today.
Edited by FergardStratoavis on Oct 16th 2023 at 9:26:41 PM
I’d say yes. There are few reasons for it. The most important one is Pi S burning all the bridges with the aggressive propaganda in state-controlled TV, where it kept bashing all other parties. Not to mention the long history of Pi S either destroying from within or absorbing any party that would form a coalition with them. They will be completely unable to form a coalition with any other party, even Konfederacja, to take the third term in office.
And, if opposition parties will remain resolute in cleaning up the mess Pi S created and remain determined to bring as many of them to justice and make them pay for 8 years of scandals and crimes, it should keep them going long enough to not crumble that quickly.
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They will be under pressure from voters to form a stable coalition, because that's what everyone expected when they voted. Whoever rocks the boat too much might lose legitimacy with their base in upcoming elections.
On the other hand, there may be an incentive to scapegoat another coalition member for the coalition fracturing over any possible conflict, in hopes their voters will abandon them for the more "reasonable" party. Hopefully we won't see a frenzy of backstabbing.
It probably helps that they won't be able to deal with anything controversial (from a right-wing point of view) until the president's term is up anyway.
The state of TV Tropes.https://www.euronews.com/2023/10/26/slovakia-announces-the-end-of-military-aid-to-ukraine
Not to my surprise, Fico's first thing in his agenda is to stop future military aid to Kyiv.
He doesn't want to see new sanctions on Moscow for blowback on Slovakia and says aid to Kyiv should be civil, not military. Moscow's not so worried... Sure, Peskov.
Edited by Ominae on Nov 1st 2023 at 6:46:41 AM
The biggest question about the post-election world here in Poland was thus: would the President, famously known to be a PIS sockpuppet, act with any amount of dignity and allow the opposition to form the new government (seeing as they have a parliamentary majority)? Or will he drag this out for no discernible reason other than slavish party loyalty?
PIS has been given a task to form a new government as the winners of the election that happened three weeks back. Unfortunately, having the largest percentage of votes doesn't mean you're guaranteed rulership (which is something PIS conveniently wants everyone to ignore); you need a minimum majority to get there, and despite their "winning" score, PIS doesn't have that, even if they were to ally with Konfederacja.
As a twist on it, Duda nominated a veteran PSL member Marek Sawicki as the senior Sejm marshall, likely hoping this might tide over PSL to their side. So far, all members of the opposition have been rebuffing their advances. Assuming they will stick by it, PIS will have about 2.5 months to fail to make a government, likely steal some more money, and then be forced to step away. Of course, that's effectively 2.5 months of doing nothing, while the opposition stresses that there's many things we still need to get done (chiefly, strike an argument with EU to get the dough we really need, on which there's a timer)
Plenty of talk about bringing PIS and its lackeys to justice, but I'm going to keep my enthusiasm in check on that one. Some people have suggested that this maneuver was orchestrated by Prezes Kaczyński to sink both Duda and Morawiecki (the previous PM) with him while PIS starts decaying.
He can't do that. The president of Poland gets only one shot at appointing the prime minister, and if that falls through, then the parliament gets to appoint the prime minister.
Does it make sense? I don't know. The president in general is an eclectic position that's supposed to mime some attributes of monarchs, but not others. I think most democracies could probably get rid of that position. But that's a story for another time.
Edited by StyxD on Nov 12th 2023 at 10:51:09 AM
The state of TV Tropes.

Serbia officially applied in 2009 and has been an official candidate country since 2012, negotiations started in 2014 and 5.9% of the chapters are listed as closed by Wikipedia.
Albania, Montenegro and North Macedonia are all also candidates in negotiations (only Montenegro has closed any chapters and actually sits at 9.1% closed), Bosnia, Moldova and Ukraine are formal candidates, Georgia and Kosovo have applied but not yet been granted candidate status, while Turkey is a candidate with negotiations having been frozen.
Edited by Silasw on Oct 15th 2023 at 2:42:19 PM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran