WARSAW: Tens of thousands of people rallied in central Warsaw on Sunday in rival demonstrations for the two candidates in Poland’s presidential election on June 1.

Warsaw’s pro-EU mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, who is backed by Poland’s centrist government, will square off against nationalist historian Karol Nawrocki.

As they marched, Nawrocki’s supporters sang patriotic and religious songs and held up signs calling for an end to immigration.

“Change is coming. We will win!”, Nawrocki told the crowd.

“I am Polish and so I am voting for a candidate who will guarantee our future and act as a counterbalance to the current government,” said Piotr Slaby, a financial sector worker from the city of Przemysl, in southeastern Poland.

Piotr Nowak, a technician from Warsaw, 41, said: “We have a cosmopolitan government. They want to introduce the euro and we will lose our sovereignty.” Organisers estimated there were around 200,000 people at the Nawrocki rally while Prime Minister Donald Tusk said 500,000 people had attended the pro-Trzaskowski rally.

But an analysis by the Onet media outlet estimated the size of the Nawrocki rally at 70,000 and the Trzaskowski one at up to 160,000.

Opinion polls are predicting a dead heat, with both candidates on 46.3 per cent.

Trzaskowski, 53, won the first round of the election on May 18 by a razor-thin margin, getting 31 per cent against 30 percent for 42-year-old Nawrocki.

Published in Dawn, May 26th, 2025