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| I went to Donald Tusk's open rally. Emotions? |
I went to Donald Tusk's open rally. Emotions? Like mushroom picking :
''Here is the Future," is the Civic Coalition's campaign slogan. Politicians visit the voivodships one by one, and the highlight of each of them is an open meeting with Donald Tusk. I proceeded to investigate. Not in the broadcast on Facebook, but in the back of the room.
I go to Chełmno in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship by combined transport: first by train, then by bus. There used to be a train station in the city, but the last connection was closed more than thirty years ago. There is, however, a miniature park of Teutonic castles, a Renaissance town hall and - as Donald Tusk joked during the meeting - the most beautiful view in the world. I mean in the world, because that's the name of the city right on the other side of the Vistula.
So it's not overly advertised, I only see a couple of posters along the way. But in a population of 20,000 Chełmno inhabitants, the news certainly spread anyway. At the meeting place - it's the school sports hall - the chairs are arranged in a circle like in an amphitheatre.
People come in groups, waving to friends. The atmosphere is cheerful, almost picnic-like. I get scraps of jokes, reports, who's up, complaints and PiS("I came with this hope to get involved, help. After all, they are lunatics"), and the PKS (the subject of transport exclusion during the meeting, however, will not be mentioned ).
- Don't you want to go to the front row ? –
An activist from the PO team suddenly asks me. It is very easy to recognize activists: if someone here has a navy blue suit, they have no strength, they came with Tusk. I don't use the offer, but I can guess why it fell. It is not easy to place people here in such a way as to have a group of different generations close to the leader. The median age of those present is probably somewhere around fifty.
I do not want to try to make diagnoses about the demographics of PO voters - that's what research is for, not journalistic impressions, maybe the young electorate is at work or is putting the child to sleep and has no time for rallies. But in observation mode: in the back of the room under the banner "Here is the future" you can see mostly gray heads.
Room before the meeting with Donald Tusk in Chełmno
Room before the meeting with Donald Tusk in Chełmno . own materials :
ADVERTISING :
- Sports hall in the School Complex No. 2 in Chełmno before the meeting with Tusk.
- Sports hall in the School Complex No. 2 in Chełmno before the meeting with Tusk . own materials.
The leader is greeted with a standing ovation. Tusk will get applause several more times. The biggest - when he says that money comes from work, not from reaching out and giving away. Or he will ask that during the campaign not to direct the blade of criticism towards other democratic parties, but rather to define the enemy well and stand firm against him.
References to PiS do the job at all. When Tusk talks about melting glaciers in the context of climate policy, there is dead silence in the room. Applause appears only after changing the subject to cutting down forests by the authorities. Sharp criticism of PiS evokes a flattering reaction, even if you are not Tusk - as when someone in the audience says that the ruling party has actually already rigged the October elections.
There will also be laughter about bon mots - for example, about Janusz Kowalski, constantly writing about Tusk, the PO chairman will joke that love does not choose. And when the woman asking the question starts her argument with the fact that they are from the same year, Tusk will immediately, with a smile, interject "impossible". The audience will reward reflexes.
But applause and soft laughter are pretty much the only responses from the room. No troublemakers have come here, no shouting, no humming, no whistling, not the slightest commotion. There are also no signs of unbridled enthusiasm or any insubordination at all (even a group bursting with the desire to speak politely raises their hands and waits for the microphone). To tell the truth, you can't even hear whispered comments in the audience. There is a reverent silence when the leader speaks.
At times I have the impression that I am sitting in a church preaching - not because Tusk adopts priestly tones, but because the audience drinks every word out of his mouth. There is an impatient murmur only when someone raises a question, and then he or she talks and talks instead of giving the floor to the chairman. And when, at the end of the meeting, the marshal of the voivodeship, Piotr Calbecki, asks for a moment of attention, no one in the back rows listens to him. The marshal, who said what captivated him most in the words of the main star of the day, definitely shines with reflected light. People didn't come here for him.
Sports hall in the School Complex No. 2 in Chełmno before the meeting with Tusk :
When some people are shuffling chairs and putting on jackets, some are trying to get to Tusk. Long after the meeting is over, a small, tight circle surrounds him. Some bring books to be signed (I see "Choice", i.e. conversations between Tusk and Anne Applebaum), others want to ask a question with which they failed to reach the microphone, still others - to take a photo. There are a few twenty-year-olds in the persistent group, but before I can enjoy this unusual sight, I already see that they are not civilians. They came from the New Generation - this is the name of the (unofficial) PO youth group. Tusk does not rush and does not create distance, people come between him and the bodyguards. I'm not stuffing myself, I'm going outside for a while.
Donald Tusk surrounded at an open meeting
Donald Tusk surrounded at an open meeting . own materials:
- Do you smoke?
Please don't smoke. I only started smoking when my children grew up, says a man with a mustache in his sixties. Then we abandon the issue of nicotine, my interlocutor prefers to circulate freely on topics. He is a doctor by profession (he actually has an Aesculapian snake in his lapel). He tells me that he is not an anti-feminist, but that a child is best raised by a mother.
In addition, young people complain that they have it hard, and he once built a house with three small children in a year and a half. Conclusion I add to myself. We are to get to work, and not reach out to Tusk for an apartment and "grandmother's". Anyway, the fact that I will be Balcerowicz criticized the grandmother's idea was also mentioned earlier in his question by one of the men in the audience. And it was the sharpest voice of the entire evening.
I can see less social Darwinism and more social involvement in a conversation with two KOD activists. He tells me about civic control of elections (the point is to monitor in election commissions whether the casting and counting of votes is proceeding correctly).
I learn that in Kuyavian-Pomeranian the movement would like to have observers and observers in two hundred commissions, especially in villages. When I ask if the action takes place across party lines, he confirms it. And he adds with nice, mild self-irony: "I don't belong to any party. I'm a code maker."
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