Poland Presidential Election on June 1: What's at Stake
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For anyone who's not been watching this vote as closely as you, just take us through who the candidates are and what exactly that campaigning on it is. Indeed, It's it's a bit of a nail biter and coin toss or whatever metaphor you want to use, but it's it's definitely a very tight race. So we have two candidates essentially in this runoff, as we mentioned, Warsaw mayor, who is a polyglot son of of a prominent jazz musician, Rafal Trzaskowski, and he's coming up against a fairly new face on the on on the political scene. Karol Nawrocki, he's a former boxer as well. And he has a bit of a checkered past that, you know, that's been coming to light and sort of keeping everyone excited about this race coming into Sunday. Yeah, it's if you look at those two characters, they basically show you how divided the country is. Two different versions of Poland, one with just Trzaskowski, who is who's very much pro-European. He's very friendly with the government and actually he's a candidate of the government. So government is hoping that by having him as a president, it will be easier for them to push forward with with a pro-EU agenda. On the other hand, Nawrocki is is very conservative. He's the representative of the opposition and he also got MAGA endorsement just this week. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was in in Poland at CPAC conference, and she said, I'm here on behalf of President Trump and Karol Nawrocki should be your president. So so he's coming as this kind of who's who's railing against migration. He's very much skeptical of climate change. And he's standing for for traditional values, as he puts them. So, you know, you basically have two visions of Poland on the ballot this Sunday. Okay. So hugely consequential for Europe. Maybe another test of Trump's influence in Europe. But let's also just think about the market reaction, because so far, Poland's had this world beating rally this year. How much is this going to put that to the test? Indeed, the Polish assets, both stocks and bonds, but also the currency, has been on a tear. And this was basically a result of the fact that when when the current government came to power in 2023, the expectations were they were reversed. It was those times of populist government where, you know, Poland had for the past eight years and they will introduce reforms, they will get power to Poland, closer to to to the EU mainstream. And also Poland has has really envious metrics when it comes to the economy. It's one of the fastest growing in in the EU. So there were expectations that things will only get better for the Polish economy, for for where it's going next. And that's where we saw the the the markets reacting accordingly. Now, the big question now is Poland also has a huge deficit, which it also has a lot to spend on on defense. So the question is, if if the government doesn't get the president that they want that that will be working with them. It may put all these plans for reforms to test and put in question.
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