The leaflets, handed out in Nowy Swiat (New World), a swish Warsaw shopping boulevard, give cheeky advice – lock the elderly in their lavatories tomorrow to prevent them voting for Jaroslaw Kaczynski and his nationalist Law and Justice party.

Not since 1989 has there been such an emotionally charged election in Poland, and it is on a knife-edge. Will it mark the beginning of the end of the Kaczynski twins, Jaroslaw as Prime Minister and Lech as President? They are Europe’s most bizarre ruling tandem and there will be many bureaucrats in the EU who would be happy to see the back of them.

But the Kaczynskis (only Jaroslaw’s job is at stake – Lech remains as President until 2009) are formidable campaigners and they speak for the Poland that feels left behind in the helter-skelter rush to modernisation. They represent people such as Anja Kacprzak, 72, who travels by bus from the urban wasteland of the Warsaw suburbs to the centre of the capital to sell berries from her garden. The fervent Roman Catholic is angry that former communists have grown rich. “I will vote for Kaczynski because he is making Poland strong. He is saying things that we couldn’t say for years, and it is good that he says them.”

Although the latest polls put Law and Justice (PiS) eight to ten percentage points behind its main rival, the moderately conservative Civic Platform (PO), Ms Kacprzak and her fellow pensioners could still keep Mr Kaczynski in power. Poland has a tradition of very low turnouts and many young voters confronted with two brands of conservatism – PiS and PO – and a leftist party that shelters some discredited former communists could stay at home. Jaroslaw Kaczynski can only benefit from the trend.

For many Westerners Mr Kaczynski’s enduring support is a puzzle. He has none of the slickness that usually marks out success in politics: no bank account or driving licence, and a clumsiness with mobile phones.

In televised debates with Donald Tusk, of Civic Platform, Mr Kaczynski scored a few points but there was no mistaking that they inhabited different Polands. Mr Tusk speaks German and English and moves easily abroad. Mr Kaczynski, by contrast, proudly announced that his only direct experience of present-day Germany was a visit to the public lavatories in the transit lounge of Frankfurt airport.

The politicians of Civic Platform have websites and regular blogs. Mr Tusk’s daughter Kasia appears on the TV show Dance with the Stars and you can find all you need to know about the Tusk family on YouTube. Mr Kaczynski lives with his mother.

“In the long term the Kaczynskis cannot survive. They are dinosaurs,” a Western diplomat said. Ryszard Kalisz, of the Left and Democracy party, goes farther: “The future is on the Left. During my campaigning in Ireland I met young people who had left their Kaczynski-voting parents in eastern Poland and who are prepared to vote for us or Civic Platform.”

But much of this is wishful thinking. An hour’s drive out of the capital, in villages where hens run free, it is plain that the Kaczynskis have the pulse. There is an urge for protection, not only against the perceived enemies of Germany, Russia, Brussels commissioners and former police snitches but also against a world that has moved too quickly over the past 15 years.

— 36% of voters support the opposition Civic Platform, according to polls
Source: SMG/KRC

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