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Huge crowds marched through Poland\u2019s capital, Warsaw, on Sunday, converging around a giant flag commemorating a 1945 uprising against Nazi Germany, as opponents of the governing party sought to rally voters for a critical general election that they see as the last chance to save the country\u2019s hard-won democratic freedoms.<\/p>\n
The Warsaw city government, which is controlled by the opposition, put the crowd at a million people at its peak. But state-controlled television, which mostly ignored the event, instead broadcasting a pre-election convention by the governing Law and Justice party, estimated fewer than 100,000 had turned out, citing police sources.<\/p>\n
The march was the biggest display of antigovernment sentiment since Poland\u2019s Solidarity trade union movement rallied against communism in the 1980s. It set the stage for the final stretch of an increasingly nasty election campaign.<\/a> Poland, bitterly polarized on everything from relations with the rest of Europe to abortion rights, will hold a general election on Oct. 15 that will decide whether the conservative Law and Justice party secures an unprecedented third term in a row in government.<\/p>\n In a speech peppered with references to Poland\u2019s past struggles for liberty, Donald Tusk, the main opposition leader, appealed for patriots to cast out a right-wing nationalist government that he said was pitting Poles against Poles, defiling the legacy of national heroes who had resisted foreign occupation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He promised to end what he called \u201cthe Polish-Polish war\u201d stoked by the governing party\u2019s denunciation as traitors Poles who deviate from traditional Catholic values or look to the European Union for help against discrimination and government meddling in the judiciary.<\/p>\n \u201cChange for the better is inevitable,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Billed as \u201cthe march of a million hearts,\u201d the event featured Polish and E.U. flags, as well as a few American ones waved by Poles with family in the United States. <\/p>\n Before leading a huge crowd in singing the Polish national anthem, which starts with the words \u201cPoland has not yet perished,\u201d Mr. Tusk said the opening line \u201chas never had such a strong and authentic ring as it does today.\u201d<\/p>\n Seeking to reclaim patriotism from Law and Justice, which presents itself as a protector of Polish values and sovereignty against E.U. bureaucrats in Brussels and accuses Mr. Tusk of being a stooge for Germany or Russia or at times both countries, the opposition leader said: \u201cThey are not Poland. We are Poland!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Speaking to his own supporters at a pre-election party convention in the southern city of Katowice, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Law and Justice\u2019s chairman and Poland\u2019s de facto leader, mocked Mr. Tusk as \u201csuch an idiot\u201d whose victory would lead to the country\u2019s enslavement by foreign powers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He claimed that Mr. Tusk\u2019s term as prime minister, from 2007 to 2014, had made \u201cPoland subordinate to external forces,\u201d especially Germany and Russia. Law and Justice, he said, needed \u201cmobilization, faith, determination and work\u201d to \u201censure that Tusk\u2019s system does not return to Poland.\u201d<\/p>\n Recent opinion polls give Law and Justice around 38 percent of the vote, compared with 30 percent for Mr. Tusk\u2019s Civic Coalition, an alliance of centrist and center-left forces and smaller left and far-right parties. The gap narrowed sharply over the summer, but after a full-throated media campaign demonizing Mr. Tusk and his supporters as enemies of the Roman Catholic Church, Law and Justice picked up support, particularly in areas that rely on the party-controlled state broadcasting system.<\/p>\n No single party is expected to win a majority in the vote, and the shape of the next government will depend on which of the front-runners \u2014 Law and Justice or Civic Coalition \u2014 can find allies to form a coalition.<\/p>\n As Mr. Tusk spoke to supporters in Warsaw, Poland\u2019s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, addressed the Law and Justice convention in southern Poland, hammering the party\u2019s favorite theme that the opposition serves German and Russian interests.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cTusk was their handmaiden,\u201d he claimed, referring to energy deals struck between Berlin and Moscow while Mr. Tusk was Poland\u2019s prime minister before taking a job in Brussels as president of the European Council \u2014 another strike against him, in the governing party\u2019s view.<\/p>\n Worried about competition from Konfederacja, a far-right group that has been vocal about reducing Poland\u2019s assistance to Ukraine, Law and Justice has sent mixed messages in recent weeks about its policy toward Kyiv. It has insisted that it would not do anything to reduce the flow of weapons to fight Russia\u2019s invading forces, while suggesting recently that it might do just that.<\/p>\n