Referendum to remove Gronkiewicz-Waltz fails in Warsaw - turnout not high enough

Good news for PO and Poland in general - the President of Warsaw, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz has survived the recall election.

Turnout was only 27.2%, with a turnout of 29% needed for the recall election to be valid.

Unfortunately, no translation as it's the "live text" and so updating frequently, but here's a snippet -

According to a survey carried out by TNS Polska on behalf of TVN and TVP, the turnout was 27.2%.

Certainly a major win for PO here, and ensures that Warsaw won't have to waste money on holding an election a mere year before the next Presidential election there.

Good news for PO? Sure, but for Poland?
HGW is not the head of state and the argument, that the PO goverment is "good" is questionable.

But it seems, that the Varsovians are satisfied with HGW.

Absolutely. Warsaw is the centre of Polish life, and it needs to be run by a stable President who doesn't attract headlines for the wrong reasons. It also - as a major financial hub in this part of the world - does not need the instability that her recall would cause. Better for everyone that she stays in office until next year.


Certainly almost 75% have made it clear that they're satisified.

I personally enjoyed going along to make sure my name was on the electoral roll, and then refusing to cast a ballot.

What I now want to know is if the morons from the provinces who wanted to waste seven million zloty this way can now be charged with it.

Centre of Polish life? I don't think so - i thought that was/is the UK? ;-)
I don't want to argue with you, but there are many Problems in Warsaw which are unsolved.


So the democracy is dangerous "for the markets" then? Quite interesting statement. :-)

But then again, the Varsovians are happy with that goverment.

Certainly it would make a lot of sense for anyone signing the recall signature to have to pay a special stamp tax. The amount of signatures that were declared invalid were staggering, after all.


Same as in every capital city. But this referendum was never about HGW and all about PiS.

For what it's worth, I see how Warsaw has developed over the last few years - HGW has achieved a lot there, even if it's not perfect.


I don't think recall elections are democratic, to be honest.

Maybe


Oh, sure - more Skyscrapers! :-)


If the majority will take part in it - they are.

Usually a very good sign of prosperity and wealth. From what I know, there's still a shortage of quality office accommodation in Warsaw.


Except it wasn't a majority - something like 160,000 people signed it. And for this referendum to be valid, it only required 29% of registered voters in Warsaw to vote - which doesn't sound very democratic at all.

Sure, this part of .. em .. economy (i mean the financial sector) doesn't need prosperity and wealth. It only needs a good goverment, which will bail out them if they make something wrong. :-)


As i said, it seems that the Varsovians are quite happy with the goverment.

I think there is something wrong with a system when almost 94% of the 27% of the capitol city that voted, want her out, but because the others don't give enough of a **** to vote, she stays.

What a confidence booster. The assumption is that those that didn't vote want her to stay, so why don't they vote to keep her in, because they don't care. It probably makes little difference to them who is in charge, and that puts her in a very fortunate position.

There's certainly something wrong with a system that allows a President of a city to be booted out of office if 14.5%+1 agree. It's not democratic in the slightest.

Anyway, it's not that they didn't give enough of a ****. They did - and they stayed away because it made no sense to take part in the referendum. Abstaining from the vote was the wisest option here, and it has shown.


Actually, those that cared - like Harry - stayed away. It was obvious that most of Warsaw was happy with her, and they showed it by not taking part in the referendum.

Just read an interesting observation :

It seems that in 2010, 22% of Warsaw voted against HGW. Now, in this referendum, 25% have voted against - which means that PiS are really struggling to increase their share of the vote. It's the same nationally - PiS are simply not making any gains.

Evidently the majority of residents are happy with the way the city is run.

In a democracy it's assumed that if you don't vote than your vote is in the majority, not the other way around. 25% or whatever is certainly enough to gage the mood of the electorate. It appears that the powers-that-be came up with a shyster idea to keep her in office. And btw I don't have a dog in this fight as I don't know who is who, but saying that a vote is invalid because not enough people went to the polling place stinks to high heaven. Poles need to learn how to govern and part of that is giving up power when one loses an election.

You miss the point meathead: those of us who wanted to keep the mayor simply refused to cast a vote in this stupid referendum. Most people didn't even bother going to a polling station (I personally did, just to make sure my name was on the electoral roll and thus that my refusal to participate in PiS' stupid game would count). Only a quarter of Varsovians voted to remove the mayor, so she stays (at least until next year, which is when the scheduled election is).

At least we will be spared a LK / Smolenkist statue on Krakowskie Przedmieście

No such thing is assumed. It's assumed that you either didn't care enough to vote or that you could carry out your goal by not voting. For those who wanted HGW to stay in office the most economic and effective tactic was to not take part.


Perhaps they could sculpt the Pałac Kultury into his likeness?

No, in a democracy, this provision prevents the President of the city from being recalled if less than 3/5ths of the original electorate don't turn up. The whole point is to prevent abuse of the democratic process.


It certainly isn't - how could a President of a city be recalled with the support of barely 25% of the voters?


That idea has been in place for years.


If the rules had been different (no minimum turnout) - then she still would have won.

She won the referendum fair and square.

Official turnout was 25.66%

The funniest thing of it all is that the lowest frequency was in Ursynów, where Guział started it all.
Second most funny thing is that PIS is now accusing everybody else of using "Byolorussian tactics" and that tens of thousands city workers influenced the result by not voting.

And third funniest thing is that these accusations come from Kamiński, who was using in PIS/Samoobrona/LPR times CBA to spy on "unfriendly" journalists. Definitely Byolorussian tactics.

So? It was legal. PiS comes up with a way to get a hated rival out of office without waiting a year for elections, supporters of the mayor point out a way to foil that plan. What's the problem?


If this were a regularly scheduled election then AFAIK there would be no minimum, but for optional contests like this it makes perfect sense to have a minimum turnout. Otherwise any determined minority could throw local government into permanent upheaval.

In other news, Jarek is hinting darkly that Tusk broke the law by appealing for people to stay home. He notably does not actually mention any particular law....

And they're threatening to go to the Council of Europe about this. Whoever would have thought that PiS would turn out to be such bad losers? It's just a pity that our own Comical Ali no longer posts here!

Which says that the voters of Ursynów wanted nothing to do with this referendum. The only interesting thing was the vote in Srodmiescie - has Warsaw also got the problem of a significant amount of working classes living there?


What makes that even more hilarious is that they themselves were the ones encouraging the city workers to vote!

As for the reference to "Belarusian tactics", they should be ashamed of themselves. They lost fair and square - but well, given that Jaroslaw Kaczynski believes that he has the sole right to rule and to decide who else rules, no wonder he's making such accusations.


Kaminski certainly knows a thing or two about using such tactics to eliminate political rivals.


Good, I hope he keeps up with the hinting. The more he shows his bitter, angry side, the better.

What's interesting about this election is that it shows that the PiS vote has hardly moved since 2010 in Warsaw. Instead of ranting about Belarusian tactics, he might want to ask himself what he's going to do about their utter inability to increase their vote...

Anyone who paid any attention to them over the last seven or eight years?

(yeah I realize the question was probably rhetorical).

I'm thinking this will stall them. As readers may recall it was HGW's victory over a PiS candidate that began the decline and fall of PiS as a governing party, clearly they thought they had to start their comeback by reversing that. And probably they had no idea they would fail, I'm actually surprised at the turnout as it indicates that the PiS brand isn't as strong as some thought.

Not so much that, more old people. Also, quite a lot of flats here have been converted into offices.

I only hope PO will take a lesson from this referendum. After all HGW is known to be very arrogant (I remember an incident when she refused to pay entrance to Wilanów - the guard denying her entry is still a local hero at the palace) and not to be in touch with the average Warsovian. As GW ( not a paper to support PIS) today wrote, she knows Warsaw from her office window and her limousine. The city is plagued by ill planning, wholesale. Lot of space for improvement.


Highest frequency was in Wawer, where HGW lives.
As for Śródmiejście, I actually do understand them. It is blocked by various projects big time, and this due to laziness/incompetence of the administration. Always the same term "brak dokumentacja". Means some imcompetent lazy git at the city found it more important to drink tea as to review documents.

Typical example: They are now re-laying the Rynek Starego Miasta. Only they started to do this in the midst of the tourist season. Coordination, planning ?

Very sensible. She was there on official business (and was clearly there on official business), so instead of her needing to pay (and everybody with her needing to pay) and then her expenses claim needing to be processed at the city's expense (along with the claims of everybody who was with her also needing to be processed at the city's expense), the sensible (and cheapest) thing to do would have been for the palace to waive the admission fee.

I am sorry but I do not agree with you on this one Harry. Wilanów is not a city institution but depends on the Ministry of Culture. I know quite a few people in Wilanów and they all confirmed she behaved very arrogant, extremely impolite and her entourage tried to intimidate the staff big time.

It sounds like poor planning. Someone on her staff should have made arrangements ahead of time (either to not pay or to have the amount for her party to be billed to the city or whatever).

Not sure how that affects the fact that she was clearly there on official business and thus making her and the people with her pay was nothing but a waste of tax-payer's money.


You mean they tried to save tax-payer money? The price of the tickets was clearly less than the amount which would need to be spent by the tax-payer in processing the expenses claims.

Nope. She should have taken out her purse, and pay the meagre entrance fee to the park by herself , which I think is 6 PLN ?
Setting an example never hurts any politician. Arrogance and being mean does, big time.
This has nothing to do with processing fees etc. It is about being a decent human being, not being mean.