PiS prize: Poland’s crucial election

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. In China, gay people are still fighting for equal rights in the eyes of the law. For now, gay marriage isn't on the cards, but couples have found a way to get similar protections through a little loophole in guardianship law. And there was a time that Las Vegas didn't have those big flashy stage shows on endless runs. That time was the late 1960s. That's when Elvis showed up, reinventing himself and forever changing Sin City. But first, Poland will hold its parliamentary elections on Sunday. Voters are poised to re elect a party currently leading one of the most illiberal governments in Europe. The Law and Justice Party pitches itself as a bastion of Catholic values, battling elite secular liberals. It's hobbled institutions such as the judiciary and the state broadcaster and met fierce resistance from the European Union. The party has been rallying hard in the run up to the vote. Its leader, Jaroslaw Kaczyski, told supporters they must fight to the very end. He's promised to keep feeding voters a steady diet of lavish handouts and social conservatism. Since Law and Justice came to power in 2015, activists have protested against the party's hard line on freedoms such as gay rights. The demonstrations have been met with police crackdowns and sometimes attacks by thugs.

I've never been so afraid. They don't see us as human beings. They see an enemy.

However, the protesters seem to be in the minority, lifted by a strong economy. Law and justice is leading in the polls.

This election will show whether the ruling Law and Justice Party will win a second term and be able to continue its changes in Poland. It will show whether the past four years have been merely a blip in Poland's political trajectory or whether this is something, something that's going to continue in Poland.

Annabelle Chapman reports for the Economist from Poland.

When communism collapsed in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989, there was the idea that liberal democracy will be the dominant and eventually the only form of government. And for many years, Poland was going in that direction. It had a peaceful, successful transition from communism towards democracy, a market economy. It joined the European Union and NATO. But all of that changed in 2015 when law and justice came to power, because it appeared to halt or even reverse this course that Poland had been following for the past 25 years.

Having said that about this blip and that change in direction, what is it that appeals to Polish voters about the Law and Justice Party?

The party's leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, says that he is creating a version of the Polish welfare state. And the idea behind this is that for many years in the 1990s, after the collapse of communism, Poland pursued a very liberal economic policy in which there was not so much security for poorer people, the elderly and families and so on. So the party is trying to reverse this. And it has introduced many new welfare policies. The most famous of these is its 500 plus program, which is a policy for families. And it involves a monthly payment of 500 zwater, which is about €120 per child every month.

But at the same time that it's not proving to be very fiscally conservative, that the party is proving to be extremely socially conservative, how has that shaped things during its time in power?

So, I mean, this is the other side of Law and Justice's program, basically alongside the economics, which is a bit sort of left wing inspired, you could say. The other side of this is the social conservatism. So the party has presented itself as the defender of the Polish family, by which it understands that as a very traditional family, two parents, men and women, and several children. Its target this year in recent months has been gay people, with the party's leader presenting homosexual relationships as a threat to the Polish family.

I mean, these are quite stark changes in the way the country is run. I mean, as a young democracy, how are Poland's institutions sort of standing up to that kind of, that kind of flux?

I mean, since coming to power in 2015, the governing party has expressly sort of deliberately targeted these institutions. So first of all, there was the public media, with the government changing the heads of the public television and radio broadcaster. And then they moved on to also the constitutional tribe, which is the body that reviews whether legislation is constitutional. And more recently, they have targeted the Supreme Court, so consciously going for the top judicial organs with the intention of controlling them.

Well, what's been the reaction to that kind of, you know, getting his banners out and adjusting the institution?

So the reaction among Polish people has been extremely polarized. The country is split between supporters and opponents of the government. So there has been a part of the population that has protested against all of these changes. There were demonstrations in Warsaw in which people were standing outside the Supreme Court holding candles in the night and singing the national anthem. And it was all very moving, but a lot of the country was not there. And it seems that some of these questions, like judicial independence and the rule of law, are pretty abstract to most of the population and that the message they're getting is really about how the ruling party has improved their lives through its new welfare programs.

But for these people who have been demonstrating or who object to the direction the country is taking, what option do they have in these elections? What does the opposition look like?

The opposition is divided. There are three main blocs which didn't manage to agree on a coalition together before these elections. The strongest opposition force is the centric Civic Platform Party, which is Donald Tusk's former party, which is quite moderate, pro European. So they are quite far behind in the polls, behind the Law and Justice Party. And then the second bloc is the Agrarians, the Farmers Party. And then there's also a left wing alliance. So one of the changes we could see this weekend is that the left could return to parliament. And this would be important because it would get issues such as environmentalism, women's rights, gay rights into the parliament.

But even with a resurgent left, it seems clear from the polls anyway that Law and Justice stands to be in a position of some power come the election. How do you think that looks then for the next term? In Poland, and indeed from further afield.

From abroad domestically, the party would cement and continue its changes to Poland's institutions. And internationally, the party has been more erratic in its foreign policy. And has gotten into conflicts with all sorts of international partners. So alongside this isolation within Europe, the Law and Justice Party has become rather chummy with Donald Trump. He visited the country in 2017 and made a speech in the Old Town in Warsaw, which went down very well with the Law and Justice Party's supporters. For example, he spoke about Poland's great heroic history and also about the need to defend Western civilization against external forces. So there really is a similarity here in some of the policies and rhetoric that you can hear in the United States and here in Poland.

Annabelle, thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

Gay sex was made legal in China only in 1997. Since that landmark ruling, gay people have gradually become more open about their sexuality. But those campaigning for greater equality have to tread carefully. China's Communist Party is suspicious of anyone asking for rights.

So when I was on my first posting to China 20 years ago, I heard that a government minister from China claimed there were no gay men in his country.

David Renney writes Cha Guan, our column about Chinese affairs.

This came up at a briefing at the British Embassy with a British government minister who had been in a meeting and asked about how many HIV cases were transmitted by gay sex. And the reply from the Chinese side was, there are no gay people in China. The British minister actually told us that she had offered a bet. She said, I bet you 100 quid there are. And she told us proudly that the Chinese minister had not taken her up on this.

And what is life like for gay people in China today?

It really depends where they live. There are big cities where there's a pretty thriving world of gay clubs and bars and bookshops and support groups. It's not illegal. You know, you can have a remarkably open life now. There's a gigantic asterisk attached to that, which is that it can be open within that kind of world of toleration, but it is not possible to be out and gay and proud and hold down a kind of public job. Certainly the idea of a kind of openly gay senior Communist official is utterly unimaginable.

And so what about legal protections then for gay couples?

So even though gay marriage is not on the horizon anytime soon in China, there has been one really interesting development. So I met a gay couple in their 30s from the Southern city of Guangzhou, which is a pretty kind of laid back place by Chinese standards. One of them, Peng Yenzi, he's actually. He's an activist for gay rights. He's an NGO down there. And his boyfriend, Yang Yi, we met in a Coffee shop. They're absolutely, openly, kind of very cheerfully. A couple that we met and they were sitting on a sofa together and making jokes at each other's expense, but kind of affectionately. But, you know, it also gets serious because they're talking about how they have friends who are progressive lawyers who started talking about an article in Chinese civil law that was essentially devised for elderly people, maybe if they get dementia or who need to go into hospital and don't have any relatives, they need someone to be the next of kin. This law was changed in 2017 to be open to all adults. And some creative lawyers said, you know, we think that if a gay couple signed contracts naming each other as their guardians, that mutual guardianship agreement would actually give them some protections if one of them goes into hospital, but would also be a baby step towards something like civil partnerships. So we've now seen over the last year or so, a few dozen cases of these gay couples finding friendly notaries who've allowed them to sign a contract together. And what's been really interesting is, as they told me, this has been written about a bit in the Chinese state media, and it hasn't yet been shut down by the government.

And so how do you think the Communist Party feels about this essentially exploitation of a loophole?

Well, if you're an optimist, you look at the fact that state media, which takes its orders from Communist Party censors, has actually printed quite a few pieces positively reporting that there have been gay couples citing these mutual guardianship pacts in places like Beijing and Guangzhou and other cities. So that's a good sign. One of the real dilemmas for gay rights groups in China is that for the Communist Party, the bit of gay rights group that is scary is actually rights group, probably more than gay. They just don't like civil society organizing and demanding rights. And one of the really interesting things is that when I interviewed Peng Yanzi and Yang Yi, who are, as I say, kind of openly and cheerfully gay, part of them knows when they look at other countries for gay marriage, that the more couples that sign these pacts and make it look like just a normal part of life, but they are also very conscious that if it's talked about too much and it gets kind of thrust in the government's face, and certainly if it gets presented as a kind of issue of human rights, then it could just all get shut down. So that's the kind of dilemma that faces all gay rights groups in China.

So it's not like a sort of uniform march to acceptance that we've seen, for example, in the West. But the attitudes clearly seem to be changing somewhat.

At least that's right. And it's very striking that the most successful high profile gay rights groups that seem to be reasonably tolerated involve the parents of gay and lesbian kids talking about coming to terms with the shock of discovering their kid is gay. And I went to a meeting of one of these support groups in Beijing and there were a bunch of kind of beautifully dressed middle aged ladies talking about how they had realized their daughters were lesbians and dabbing their eyes with handkerchiefs and telling their stories. And their kids were kind of wandering around in rainbow T shirts, kind of, you know, putting out rainbow flags. And it was all incredibly wholesome and deliberately so because that's how you try and win acceptance from the broader culture. And I met a very interesting girl, a student at a top university in Beijing called Ming. She's 22, she is lesbian. She has not told her parents. I asked her whether she thought that gay people might ever get married in China. She had a very interesting take, that it's just generational, that people born in the 1960s just cannot accept it.

Boys and girls born after the 2000.

But when she looks at Chinese born in the 80s or the 90s or certainly more recently her peers at university, she said, if they become the main voices of China, I believe things will be different.

Well, I mean, one step at a time, I suppose. At least the party seems to admit to accept that gay people exist now.

That's right. And you could make a case, and gay rights groups do, to the Communist Party, that if their primary interest in life is social stability, then responsible gay couples making sure that they look after each other in old age is a good step. And as Ming told me, times have changed. You know, the government used to want to control every aspect of Chinese personal lives, and now they don't, so much, as long as you don't cross political red lines. So that is a. Is a window that gay couples are ready to use.

David, thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

Sometimes two great things are even better together. Peanut butter and jelly, Fred and Ginger, Batman and Robin, Elvis and Vegas. But in 1969, that pairing was not as easy as it sounds.

Elvis was considered over the hill and his career was really floundering.

Richard Zoglin is a longtime culture correspondent for Time magazine and the author of a new book about Elvis's time in Sin City.

He had come back from the army in 1960, and suddenly his manager, Colonel Parker, decided he would do no more live performing. He would only make movies and recordings. During the entire 1960s, except for a couple of benefit concerts, he was just making those movies which were getting worse and worse. The pop songs he was recording were not making the charts anymore. By the late 60s, he was bored and frustrated and he wanted to get back to live performing.

Things weren't much better for Las Vegas. In the early 1960s, Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack drew crowds crooning at intimate nightclub shows. But the rock revolution and counterculture protests started to make Vegas look a little dated.

Suddenly, Vegas was not so cool anymore. The rock groups were not coming to Las Vegas. The younger generation was not interested in Las Vegas then. The nightclub era was kind of fading out. And so Vegas was starting to wonder what it was going to do to stay relevant.

It was actually a perfect marriage. Elvis, when he arrived at Vegas, he was a man in need of redemption.

Emily Bobro writes about culture for the Economist.

You know, Vegas really needed a new business model. And Elvis was really excited to be returning to the stage and to performing for a live audience. It had been so long since he actually had an opportunity to be in the midst of his fans. And he created this handpicked dream team of musicians, two vocal groups, 40 piece orchestra. He was trim and energetic, and at 34, he was still impossibly handsome. And his voice was actually richer and, and deeper than what came before. And he had just a tremendous range. And he created just a phenomenal show that played twice a night, seven nights a week for four straight weeks. Sold out every show and you know, the reviews were nearly all ecstatic. The Rolling Stone hailed him as supernatural, his own resurrection.

So they were happy to keep having him back.

Oh yeah. Suddenly Elvis supplanted Sinatra as the most bankable attraction in Vegas. And he returned to Vegas twice a year for seven years and always to sell out crowds. Entertainers were still often loss leaders. And Elvis made a profit despite earning a record breaking $125,000 a week.

But that kind of work ethic couldn't carry on forever.

Well, the crazy schedule of four straight weeks, two shows a night, was pretty relentless. And by 1971, Elvis was looking tired and heavy. The constant performing and the late nights and the relentless time in an entourage of sycophants, you know, basically contributed to his mounting drug use. And he needed pills to stay up and pills to go to sleep. His days would start at 5pm with a breakfast of a Spanish omelet and a pound of bacon. And, you know, his weight started ballooning. And he started to gradually deteriorate. By 1975, he needed a chair on stage. He was basically phoning it in. He had become a parody of himself before he died in Memphis from a drug overdose in 1977.

And what do you think his legacy is, both personally and for Vegas itself?

He was a remarkable performer. He really knew how to work a crowd. He had an incredible range. He could cover any number of genres of music. He also proved that, you know, families from the heartland who would come to Vegas for their once a year vacation were ready to listen to all sorts of different types of music.

People who weren't necessarily Vegas gamblers, high rollers. They were people who maybe had never been to Vegas before. And that was the new kind of audience that Vegas would eventually discover in its own reinvention. A couple of decades later when Vegas was reinvented with the sort of theme park hotels and the big Cirque du Soleil extravaganzas. And now you can see all sorts of rock and pop performers, Lady Gaga, Aerosmith, Sting, doing Vegas shows. I think that all began with Elvis Presley.

The things that we too could plan Wouldn't make my dreams come true. That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you like us, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts and you can subscribe to the economist@exterator.com radio. Offer 12 issues for $12 or 12 pounds. See you back here on Monday.