Is Poland about to elect a hooligan ‘pimp' as president?

Times

31-05-2025

The Baltic port of Gdansk has been a crucible of some of the most significant events in modern European history.
The opening salvos of the Second World War were fired from its harbour. And 50 years later, the Solidarity trade union movement forged in its shipyards toppled Poland's communist dictatorship, propelling a mustachioed electrician called Lech Walesa to the presidency and then to the Nobel peace prize.
Now another son of Gdansk, who trained as a boxer on the same vast shipbuilding complex from which Walesa rallied the nation, is threatening to upset the country — and the continent's — political order.
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Karol Nawrocki, 42, a right-wing historian with a background in football hooliganism who has never previously held elected office, stands a solid chance of winning the Polish presidency on Sunday. Should he triumph, he has given every indication that he will take a wrecking ball to the centrist agenda of prime minister Donald Tusk, using the head of state's powers to obstruct him wherever possible.
Poland's neighbours are increasingly alarmed at the prospect. 'A Nawrocki presidency would be a nightmare,' said one European diplomat.
It is a sentiment shared by Walesa, 81, who posted on X: 'My last request … and warning — anyone but Nawrocki!'
Until six months ago, Nawrocki was largely unknown to anyone outside his particular academic niche.
For all but the final weeks of the campaign he languished in the polls, far behind Rafal Trzaskowski, 53, the mayor of Warsaw and Tusk's preferred candidate.
Over the past ten days he has also been bombarded by allegations about his past that might have destroyed a mainstream politician: participation in mass street brawls, contacts in the criminal underworld and claims that he procured prostitutes for guests at a luxury hotel — which he strenuously denies.
Yet Nawrocki has the backing of the Law and Justice (PiS) party, one of the most ruthless and effective populist electoral machines in Europe, and its mastermind Jarosław Kaczynski.
In 2017, only four years after he completed his doctorate in history, Nawrocki was plucked from obscurity by Kaczynski to run Gdansk's imposing Museum of the Second World War. One of Poland's flagship historical institutions, he turned it into a showcase for Kaczynski's black-and-white vision of an innocent country that suffered more than any other from the conflict.
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'He was unknown in academic circles,' said Pawel Machcewicz, a former senior adviser to Tusk who was the museum's founding director until he was ejected to make way for Nawrocki.
'His approach 100 per cent reflects the politics of history of the Law and Justice party. One can call it nationalistic: emphasising the exceptional heroism and martyrdom of Poles in the 20th century, rejecting any more critical approaches to our history.'
In 2021 Nawrocki was promoted to lead the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), a public body tasked with investigating crimes against the Polish nation and vetting newly appointed public officials for ties to communist-era state security bodies.
Figures in PiS say he was then chosen to run for the presidency because he combined the loyalty and reliability of a party footsoldier — despite never having been a card-carrying member — with a clean skin in political terms, untainted by the party's controversial years in government from 2015 to 2023.
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The idea was that this would allow him to unite Poland's fractious right, luring back voters who have drifted away towards more extremist candidates such as Sławomir Mentzen, a radical libertarian, and Grzegorz Braun, an unabashed antisemite.
'A non-party candidate offers the opportunity to gain broader support in the elections,' said Radoslaw Fogiel, an MP and former PiS spin doctor who serves on the party's national executive. 'Karol Nawrocki's greatest strengths as a political figure lie in his staunchly patriotic and sovereigntist stance.'
Under the intense media scrutiny of recent weeks, however, Nawrocki's skin has turned out not to be quite so clean as it once appeared.
Alongside a loyalty to Chelsea football club so profound he once had its logo tattooed on his chest, Nawrocki was also for many years a fanatical supporter of his local football team, Lechia Gdansk, and its firm of thuggish hardcore fans who call themselves the 'hooligans of the Free City'.
Over the past fortnight he has admitted that in 2009 he took part in 70-a-side punch-ups with fans of rival clubs, alongside scores of convicted criminals armed with clubs and brass knuckles.
Nawrocki has tried to shrug these melees off as 'noble' battles. Others, however, regard them as a symptom of something darker.
'Taking part in an arranged fight is a crime — it constitutes participation in a brawl,' said Szymon Jadczak, an investigative writer for the Wirtualna Polska news website who specialises in football hooliganism. He has identified 35 participants in Nawrocki's 2009 forest brawl with a detailed list of more than 130 court convictions between them.
Nawrocki's contacts with football hooligans and criminals also lasted well beyond 2009. Last year he was photographed with Patryk Masiak, a fellow Lechia supporter and MMA fighter who served time in prison for abducting a woman and is facing additional court proceedings for participation in an organised crime group and pimping.
'These are ongoing accusations, and Mr Nawrocki does not deny his acquaintance [with Masiak],' said Jadczak. The candidate has characterised his relationship with Masiak as 'former sparring partners'.
A more lurid raft of allegations surfaced this week when Onet, another news website, published an investigation that accused Nawrocki of having moonlighted as a pimp during a stint working as a security guard at the Grand Hotel in Sopot, a coastal resort near Gdansk.
Nawrocki denied the report and said he would sue Onet — although rather than using a 24-hour judicial process designed for rapid rebuttal in elections he has opted for a standard libel case, which may take years to come to a conclusion.
Separately, it emerged that Nawrocki had acquired a flat from a disabled elderly man in exchange for a promise to care for him for life, but reneged on his pledge. The original owner was found living in a state care home without any assistance from Nawrocki, who has since offered to donate the apartment to charity.
PiS functionaries and the outgoing President Duda, an ally of the party, have dismissed these negative headlines as either baseless political smears or forgivable 'mistakes of youth'.
Timothy Garton Ash, professor of European studies at Oxford University and an expert on Poland, said: 'One would need to check the detail on every story: extorting a flat from an elderly alcoholic, pimping for prostitutes, stories about financial improprieties at the Institute of National Remembrance.
'Some give the impression of someone who has neither the character nor the professional qualifications to be president of a very important European country at a very important juncture in European history.'
Yet Nawrocki is not without international support. President Trump, who has a soft spot for Duda and the PiS party, invited him into the Oval Office for a photo opportunity, and last week Kristi Noem, the US homeland security secretary, implied that only a Nawrocki presidency could ensure that American troops remained in Poland.
'Donald Trump is a strong leader for us, but you have an opportunity to have just as strong of a leader in Karol if you make him the leader of this country,' she said on a visit to Rzeszow. 'If you elect a leader who will work with President Trump, the Polish people will have a strong ally … You will continue to have a US military presence here.'
The final polls suggest that Nawrocki and Trzaskowski are separated by a fraction of a percentage point in the electoral race. Turnout may prove decisive.
The Polish media environment has become so poisonous that the allegations against Nawrocki may even be helping him. There are signs that fringe right-wing voters are rallying to his cause because they regard him as a political martyr.
Pawel Rybicki, an adviser to the Nawrocki campaign, said the candidate had been subjected to the 'dirtiest game in the history of Polish politics since [the start of democracy in] 1989.
'Most of the media, including state media, are openly on Trzaskowski's side. Poles do not like intrusive propaganda, which is why the current actions of the media and authorities against Nawrocki are rather contributing to an increase in support for him.
'Poles have simply assumed that the government is panicking in fear of Nawrocki's victory.'