electoral party

It is 03:17 in the morning and I am ecstatic. I have been voting for the last 10 years and for the first time ever I have felt that who I am voting for really matters. It means that the party that I have voted for will change the country. And I don’t mean meaningless tax exemptions. It means changing the core of the country. It is significant. The mentality of the Polish people has changed. Today the Poles voted. The turnout was over 53 per cent. The highest since 1989. The highest since the collapse of the Wall! It means the students mobilised themselves and voted. It means that people who didn’t give a freakin’ hoot in 2005 got off their fat arses and went to the ballot box. Enough was enough. A change was mandatory. It means that people are celebrating tonight and will have a foreign policy to look forward to that they can accept and not be embarrassed of. The Platoforma Obywatelska (PO - Civic Platform) won with a sweeping 42 per cent (the official numbers are in on Tuesday), whilst the tyrant extreme right (PiS - Law and Justice) - whose major concern was turning Poland into a police state - ironic, given the country's commy past, - admitted its defeat (with a tad of class – I’ll give ‘em that), curling its tail between its succulent well-fed buttocks. Donald Tusk will be the new Prime Minister of Poland and although his Slavic formal breeding forbade him to crack a smile, we all knew the shiny eye socket meant he was about to shed a tear or two at the victory. Warsaw electoral turnout just a little under 70 per cent. Krakow came in second. The Poles of Dublin waited in 40 min queues to vote. 95 per cent of Poles living in Sweden voted. The Poles of Chicago voted for a sweeping PO majority. Ah, it is good to be here. Fuck. It is exciting.

Besides I am pissed and I cannot type properly. We had an electoral party at our place tonight and I take back everything I have written before. We were all happy, enthusiastic, with a lot to say. We popped champagne and congratulated ourselves that PiS will be thrown to the dustbin of shit.

I am typing on the computer whilst Mat is chanting in his sleep in an induced coma ‘Polska, Polska, Polska!’. He is sleeping in our spare room on the floor. I love it. “I wonder how many places in Poland are celebrating like we are today…?”, he is muttering. I bet a lot…

Truly. I am happy to be here.

Magda. Accountant. "Ostatnia niedziela" - Fogg

Tomek. Software engineer. "If we don't have Ireland by next year, someone will have a lot of answering to do"...

Wojtek. Engineer student. "So long PiS. Good riddance".

Justyna (Titka) . Portuguese translator. "We needed to reach the bottom so that we could rebound".

Mat. Gets called in on the job to make a last run to one of the voting centres that still hadn't closed.
Photographer. Gazeta Wyborcza (one of the major leading newspapers in Poland). "C'mon Tusk! Loosen up! Just take off your suit jaket and do a victory dance!!"

Marcin. Audit specialist. "It is just easier for Poles to unite agianst evil..."

Congratulating ourselves.
Then we all stood up and sang the national anthem with the telly (I haven't done that since year 2).

Tusk wins. New PM of Poland.

Victory jig at ours. The neighbour came in around 2am in his boxers with a pleading look.
I nodded. We turned down the music.