Opening and the case for a new majority

Former prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki addressed the Rozwój Plus convention at the Palladium Theatre in Warsaw on Saturday, 17 October. Rozwój Plus is an association founded by Morawiecki, not a political party. He opened with a verse from the patriotic primer Katechizm polskiego dziecka by Wojciech Bejza, then asked whether Poles still lived among their own kind and whether there was too much hatred in the country. He argued that the association exists because affairs in Poland were heading in the wrong direction, pointing to dinner tables turning into front lines and to loving Poland being equated with hating a neighbour. He said his circle could play an important role in forming a future parliamentary majority.

“Without Rozwój Plus, it will not be possible to build a good government for Poland.”

Attacks on Tusk and rival parties

Morawiecki accused Prime Minister Donald Tusk of pushing substitute topics instead of the issues that matter most to people, such as work, pay, housing, raising children and career prospects. He called Tusk a "charlatan" and said he runs a masquerade. He also accused the government of distracting Poles from rising living costs. In the same speech he described the Civic Coalition and the Left as anti-American, and Law and Justice and the Confederation as anti-European. He reserved his harshest words for Grzegorz Braun's Confederation Crown of Poland, which he called pro-Russian and isolationist. He presented his own group as the only one that combines trust in alliances with realism about international politics.

Alliances, the EU and the economy

Morawiecki said Poland should keep strong relations with both the United States and European states. He proposed changing how the European Union works, so that a coalition of willing members builds an economic space like the one that existed before the Lisbon Treaty, or perhaps before Maastricht. He said this would limit European integration and increase the importance of economic cooperation between member states. A large part of the speech was devoted to the economy, and reports list ZUS, banks and Orlen among the topics, though the available reports give no detail on those proposals. Morawiecki also insisted that his group wants to stay in both the European Union and NATO.

“We have Rozwój Plus, which believes in the strength of alliances. Yes to alliances. We do not want to be pushed out of the European Union, or out of NATO.”

Stage, guests and his own slip

The convention began at noon, but party activists had to wait about 1.5 hours before Morawiecki appeared on stage with a white-and-red flag. Just before him, Paulina Matysiak, a former member of the Razem party, spoke as a special guest. Morawiecki introduced her as "our Paulina Matysiak" and then corrected himself to posłanka, the Polish term for a female member of parliament. Matysiak was presented as a guest from the field of politics, though her earlier work focused on large infrastructure projects such as the Central Communication Port. Morawiecki used the event to claim that his group has the most balanced international position, and he rejected the notion that his group is naive.

“We are not naive. We know perfectly well that in the international arena we must fight firmly for our reasons, our rights and our interests.”