Tusk’s losing streak

“We’re drowning!” runs the headline in Wprost weekly, as Prime Minister Donald Tusk and his ruling Civic Platform’s (PO) poll ratings crash. A recent poll by CBOS has found that 44 percent of respondents distrust the Polish PM, his worst rating ever. The list of controversies is long: the Amber Gold scandal, in which Tusk’s son was embroiled, the erroneous identification of the bodies of the Smolensk air crash victims (mistakes have been confirmed in at least two cases), or the PM’s poorly received recent parliament speech (the so-called “second exposé”), which, for the Warsaw weekly, proved to be a hotchpotch of distant and vague promises rather than a detailed plan for putting the country quickly back on the road to growth. Wprost notes —

This was to be his autumn. The exposé and a new opening. What we’ve got instead is a man on the defensive, receiving blow after blow. Something’s gone wrong and something's gone too far. […] Voters are increasingly angry at Donald Tusk and blame him for all the misfortunes – whether caused by him or not. Most recently, for the National Stadium’s flooded pitch.

This comes after torrential rain and the organisers’ failure to bring out the roof turned Warsaw’s National Stadium into a swamp last week, forcing FIFA to reschedule the Poland-England World Cup qualifier match for the following day. The slip-up triggered off an avalanche of vehement comments on the social media, and a wave of criticism, also against the PM. An unnamed PO member lamented to *Wpros*t —

We used to be ahead of what the media said, and that was our strength. Today, we’re lagging half a step behind events.