Return to centre? Poland’s presidential run-off

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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. It's easy to forget that the world was already dealing with a viral epidemic before COVID 19, HIV and AIDS. That is because over decades, drugs were developed, behaviors changed and stigma reduced. And that holds lessons for the current crisis. And think of a penguin. Where is it? On ice. Right? You'd think that shrinking sea ice in Antarctica would be as bad for penguins as it has been for polar bears in the Arctic. But new research suggests that it's not that simple. First up though, On Sunday, Poland will head back to the polls to vote for its next president. The election is a runoff between the conservative incumbent and his centrist challenger. There's a huge amount at stake. The two candidates offer very different visions for the country. That and the outcome will have consequences not just for Poland, but for Europe too.

So in this election, polls will choose between Andrzej Duda, the law and justice backed president, and Rafa Traskowski, the mayor of Warsaw, who's from the centrist Civic Platform Party.

Annabelle Chapman writes about Poland for the Economist and is based in Warsaw.

And the reason there's a runoff is because in the first round on June 28, none of the candidates got over 50% of the vote.

And why, to your mind, is this election so important? What is it that Poles are voting on here?

So this election is the latest installment of the long conflict between the ruling Law and Justice Party in Poland and the centrist opposition, which has dominated Polish politics for more than a decade. Since coming to power in 2015, the law and Justice Party has really strengthened its grip over the country. Some of its first moves were to take over the public television and radio broadcasters, and from there, it also moved on to the courts, most recently the Supreme Court. Its argument is that it's trying to purge these institutions of remnants of the communist era. And this has resulted in a conflict with the European Commission, which accuses the Polish government of undermining the rule of law.

And so what effect has that had on the electorate?

So the result is that Poland is now extremely polarized, with the country divided between supporters and critics of the ruling party. In particular, there's a difference between the big cities and smaller town voters, who are more likely to support the incumbent president. Another fault line is between eastern Poland, which is more rural, more socially conservative, and the west, which is more developed in terms of infrastructure and also tends to vote more liberal. And this is visible in the first round results of this election, with the east backing the socially conservative Duda, who is the incumbent president, and the west going more towards Traskowski, the liberal mayor of Warsaw. Now, on paper, they look pretty alike. They were Both born in 1972, Traskowski in Warsaw and Duda and Krakow. Both of them come from intelligentsia families, and both of them worked in academia before going into politics. And they were also both members of the European Parliament. But despite these similarities, they're actually on opposite sides of the political conflict in Poland at the moment.

And how has the election campaign gone so far?

Initially, the election was overshadowed by the coronavirus epidemic, which resulted in the original election in May being postponed. But since then, the virus itself, and even in the economy, have not really figured inside in the campaign. The focus of the campaign has been on cultural issues, with Duda attacking the gay community and championing what he considers the traditional family.

And why has the focus been on those issues?

Duda's attack on the gay community is an attempt to tap into the part of society that is more socially conservative. More than half of polls oppose gay marriage, and even more so adoption by same sex couples. And he has been warning that if Treskowski becomes president, then he will allow gay people to corrupt children. And the reason he's doing this is because as mayor of Warsaw, Chaskovsky signed a declaration that aimed to make the Capitol more welcoming to gay people and other sexual minorities.

And how has Mr. Chaskovsky responded to those attacks?

By presenting a message of openness. So one of the images he uses in his campaign is that of an open hand as opposed to a clenched fist. In one of his speeches this week, he echoed Martin Luther King with the image of I have a dream. It's really a message of. Of peace and positivity rather than divisions.

And how does that open versus closed question apply to Poland in the wider world? How much does this election affect how Poland will deal with Europe?

For example, I think this difference between the candidates is visible in their foreign policy priorities. So Duda has prioritized the relationship with the Trump administration. Just before the first round vote in June, he went on an unexpected visit to the White House to meet with Trump. And he's really emphasized this closeness between the two of them. On the other hand, Praskovsky has called for Poland to play a more active role in Europe, which I think is significant in the context of Europe after Brexit. In particular, Traskovsky wants to focus on relations with France and Germany. He said that for his first foreign visit, rather than going somewhere himself, he will invite the French and German presidents to Warsaw with the purpose of reviving the Weimar triangle between France, Germany and Poland. The broad idea here is to make Poland a bigger player in the eu.

But what about the degree to which Poland has been part of a constant rise of populism in Eastern Europe?

So the big point is that what happens in Poland this weekend is not taking place in a vacuum. From the start, the changes in Poland under the Law and Justice Party have been in some way interconnected with the other changes within Europe and also in the United States. So what happens in Poland will send a signal to voters and politicians in other countries, too.

How do you mean? What kind of signal do you think it would send if Mr. Czaskovsky wins?

It will be a message that voters in Poland have had enough of this politics of fear, politics of closeness, of frightening people with enemies, whether those are gay people or refugees. It will be a signal that a different kind of politics is popular and also can win in an election.

And you think that message would resonate regionally at least?

I think it would be a big sign of encouragement, because in nearby Hungary, Viktor Orban has really brought the country under his control. And this would show that Poland, the biggest country in the region, has chosen a different route.

And alternatively, if Mr. Duda wins. What are the implications there, do you think?

I think Poland is not quite hungry. There's still a stronger opposition and a stronger civil society. But it is true that once this election is behind Poland, then there's not another election on the horizon for now, which gives the ruling party the opportunity to really focus on its changes which could be controversial. For example, they're discussing changes to foreign.

Owned media companies and what's your guess? How do you think this will go?

So the opinion polls put the two candidates neck and neck and I think it's an election in which every single vote was going to count.

Annabel, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you.

For a lot more analysis like this, subscribe to the Economist to find the best introductory offer wherever you are, just go to economist.com intelligenceoffer.

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HIV crossed from chimpanzees to humans around a century ago. Since then, 33 million people have died of AIDS. Today, the worst of the pandemic is over, but with no cure and no vaccine, it's far from disappeared, not least in Africa, which has always been home to the largest number of HIV positive people. Boosting the world's HIV response was on the agenda this week at the International AIDS Conference this year, held virtually because of COVID 19 since 1985, the international.

Aids Conference has helped answer the most pressing research questions in hiv, and this year is no different, although there is a new virus vying for worldwide immediate attention.

COVID 19 as the world grapples with the coronavirus, there are lessons to be drawn from that other great pandemic.

I think the similarity with the two pandemics, certainly stigma, is one of the things that they have in common, which of course was very, very powerful in the early days of the HIV pandemic.

As the director of the World Health Organization's Africa region, Dr. Matsidiso Moeti coordinates the continent's efforts against COVID 19. She's also a veteran of the fight against HIV.

I worked in the Ministry of Health of Botswana as the national program manager for HIV in the very early days of the HIV epidemic, we were screening women, pregnant women, and of course, initially seeing cases, people who came in ill with hiv. So because there was such a depth of stigma, it was absolutely in secret that we kept the register, as it was called, of people who were infected with hiv. We would get the list of the day from the laboratory and then write them down in this notebook and then lock them up in a drawer in my desk in my office and be absolutely careful about keeping this information secret.

Soon, a single notebook wasn't enough. By the end of the 1990s, more than a quarter of Botswanans aged between 15 and 49 had the virus. A similar story was unfolding across Sub Saharan Africa. By 1996, AIDS was the most common cause of death in the region. But huge strides have been made since then.

The world's come a long way in the fight against HIV AIDS.

John McDermott is our chief Africa correspondent.

There's not the same stigma there once was. There's far less hysteria around the disease. New infections have decreased for 25 years and people are living much longer with HIV in most of the world. It's now pretty much a chronic disease.

And to your mind, that's down to the long run public health response to it.

I think there are a couple of things. The first is behaviour and the second is science. Over the years, people have become much better at preventing infection. That mostly means having safer sex. Condom use is particularly important, but it's also things like clean needles if you're a drug addict, or making sure you take drugs if you already have HIV and you're a mother and you don't want to pass it on to your child. Then there is the biomedical advances. In 1996, we saw the first effective combination, antiretroviral therapy, and that led to dramatic reductions in mortality rates and effectively it turned the tide in the rich world. And then within a decade, the cost of those effective drugs came down and were pretty much widely available in poorer countries as well.

And looking at the numbers that have gone down consistently for 25 years now, does that give you reason to be optimistic that HIV and AIDS will just no longer be a public health threat?

At some point, I think it's less of a threat, but it will likely be around for many more years to come. 1.7 million people were still newly infected in 2019. And there's still no cure and there's still no vaccine, of course. And that's before you even get into the indirect effects that are felt throughout, especially much of Sub Saharan Africa. Tens of millions of families in the region are dealing with the economic and social fallout to this day. So while we can confidently say the worst of the pandemic is over, its effects very much endure.

The HIV AIDS pandemic is a constant reference point for many of the doctors leading the public health response to the coronavirus. When Dr. Moweti reads the latest COVID 19 case numbers, she thinks of those notebooks she used to lock in her drawer.

I've actually been very surprised by the stigma around COVID 19. There was a great deal of stigma at the beginning, I think, because of the fear that is a highly infectious and fatal disease. And we did encounter families being attacked, the first testing centers also being attacked. And there was a slightly similar reticence, particularly at the beginning, in sharing information about COVID 19 and to some extent also then getting information, as you know, about the context of people.

Do you think, from your work with HIV and aids, do you think it offers any lessons for the pandemic? What have you learned in dealing with HIV and AIDS that you think might apply to COVID 19?

It was very soon understood in HIV that controlling the virus went way beyond the health sector. I remember going to speak to village elders about this virus and then talking to them about the various aspects of HIV which need a multifaceted response, not only from the public health people, but from the society, because this was very much around trying to influence and change social norms, norms of behavior. One of the things that we've learned very much in the HIV response was the importance of communities of people being informed, empowered people organizing themselves to take action. And for COVID 19, it's one thing to say, well, you know, you need to keep your distance from neighbors. You need to wear a mask when you go out in public. And it's another for people to be enabled to do that sometimes under the circumstances in which they live. So people really need to have this information from people with whom they trust, with whom they can have a real conversation, a real discussion. We learn this a lot in hiv. We've also seen the impact of disparity. Both viruses did not affect people the same. So people's circumstances, their socioeconomic circumstances, their ability to be in control of their own lives, it makes a big difference. It made a huge difference in HIV, and it's also making a big difference in COVID 19. So I think there are so many parallels and so many lessons that can be taken on board.

Our chief Africa correspondent, John McDermott, has one too.

One clear lesson from HIV AIDS is that pandemics do not readily disappear. And I know right now the idea that the world may have to live with COVID 19 for years, if not decades, is hardly going to be a popular one. But if you look back over the four or more decades that the world has lived with HIV aids, you see that scientific breakthroughs have come, but they've never quite been the silver bullet that people have hoped for. An HIV vaccine, for example, has been years away for decades. And if there's an ultimate lesson, then it's us, it's human beings that are responsible for turning the course of these things. So while many of us are waiting for science to save us from the current pandemic, while science may help, it's ultimately up to societies to adjust in sadly, often quite painful ways.

Science will in time help to tame the COVID 19 crisis. But right now, mitigating one pandemic is limiting efforts to deploy hard won therapies for the other. This week, Babbage, our sister show on science and technology, speaks to Meg Doherty, also of the World Health Organization.

We have antiretrovirals that are being developed and made, but their difficulty getting them.

Around to where they need to be because the countries are closed down and.

Or flights are delayed. But more often now we're hearing that even clinics are being closed down and.

People are not able to access their antiretrovirals at the clinic sites as well.

Look for Babbage wherever you get your podcasts. Adelie penguins make their home in the icy coastal waters of the Antarctic. But the sizes of some Adelie populations have been fluctuating and scientists have been trying to work out why.

Some scientists at the Japanese National Institute of Polar Research in Tokyo monitored 175 Adelie penguins in the Lutso home bay area of continental East Antarctica using GPS devices, accelerometers and video cameras.

Peter Silk writes about science for the Economist.

They did this over four breeding seasons from 2010 onwards.

And what did they find?

What they found was that in three of those four breeding seasons there was quite heavy ice. Antarctic sea ice fluctuates quite a lot from year to year. But in one of Those years, the 201617 breeding season, there were kind of record lows in sea ice in that bay when a big sheet broke up. And what happened in that year was a couple of different things they noticed by the penguins behavior. So first of all, they started doing shorter dives when foraging for krill and hunting for fish. And despite doing dives of shorter duration, they caught more krill in a shorter unit time. And this higher foraging success led to greater body mass in both males and females and also chicks. And they had more chicks per nest. And these fledglings grew faster and grew fatter because of the higher foraging success. And they're fed by regurgitation from their parents. And what this allowed was penguins to have more chicks per nest, more of those were healthy and survived. And overall there was a penguin baby boom in that year of lower ice.

And why do they suppose that is?

The reason is actually fairly simple. And it became clear once they started watching the penguins behavior, because when the ice is thick, the penguins have to walk or toboggan on their stomachs a long way to find cracks in the ice in which to dive, in which to access the water. Sometimes they take quite lengthy rests along the way that they've been known to walk for miles and miles, sometimes more than 30 miles to reach open water. In tin ice, however, the birds can dive wherever they want, sometimes right beside their own nest. Because the ice sheet is opened up and there's water much closer. And because they can move four times faster in the water than on land, foraging trips could take less time on average. So the upshot of all of this is that they only spend a fraction of the energy on a foraging trip in ice free conditions compared to icy ones. And that surplus energy can then go into having more chicks and fattening them up. So that is why we see this pattern of reproduction, failures in the ice years and booms when the ice melts.

So if the broader trend is for less and less Antarctic ice over time, do you think in the long run we're just going to see more and more penguin baby booms?

If what is predicted does come to pass and Antarctic sea ice starts to melt, going into the next century, we can expect to see some penguin baby booms, at least for the Adelies in continental East Antarctica. It's important to note, however, that this does not apply to all the delis, those who live on the Antarctic Peninsula and islands closer to the sea where the temperatures are a bit warmer and sea ice is already sparse. Those penguins are known to fare worse when the ice melts further. And this probably has to do with the loss of resting places and limited protection from predators. So in the long term, despite the possible population booms on the icy inner continent, melting ice is not good for Adelies or indeed for anybody else.

Peter, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you very much, Jason.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you like us, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts and see you back here on Monday. Sam.