Together supports the government separately

The signing of the coalition agreement, which had been announced for quite some time, was not as joyous an event as one might have expected. The agreement itself is heavily framed, and that's the crudest term - there are announcements of specifics, but it's also hard to abstract from the high level of generality and selectivity in approaching problems. It has already been said for days that there are quite nervous discussions within the New Left - it was the co-founding NL party Together that pointed out that the content of the agreement does not match the election promises made. And admittedly, politicians also of Razem admitted that their strength - counted in votes - is not very high, and of course they were, and are, ready to compromise, but compromises also have their limits.

These, it seems, were exceeded especially in the area of women's rights, specifically - abortion. For while there was room in the coalition agreement for the restoration of funding for in vitro procedures, prenatal testing or anesthesia in childbirth, on the key issue - that of legalizing abortion - absolutely nothing happened. Apart from an enigmatic, for the time being, promise to overturn the October 2020 verdict of the Constitutional Tribunal of Julia Przyłębska, or - de facto - to restore the so-called abortion compromise. Which neither the left-wing groups nor the crushing part of the Civic Coalition want.

The Left, one hears behind the scenes, would accept this as a transitional stage - political pragmatics indicate that it would not be possible to successfully carry out a change in the law in the next several months anyway, due to the President's veto and the current composition of the TC. However, the politicians of Together (and not only) rightly point out that the record turnout, which brought the opposition victory, is to a huge extent the result of a gigantic mobilization of the women's electorate, as well as young voters - and their expectations cannot be disappointed. It seems that politicians of other democratic groups are also aware of this, although they plan to play the matter their own way. Will voters understand this?

The second stone that has changed the course of the avalanche on the list of groupings represented in the government is health care issues, specifically, health money. The talks on the new government, which have been going on for nearly a month now, have shown, for sure, one thing: politicians are well aware that - when it comes to health care - without a guarantee of an increase in public spending there is nothing to even undertake the task, because it is mission impossible (even if it is clear that money alone is not enough). The New Left promised an increase in outlays to 8 percent of GDP, the Third Way promised an increase to 7 percent, and the coalition agreement included a vague promise that spending would increase. So the Civic Coalition will take responsibility for health (reluctantly, but it failed to shift the task onto the shoulders of smaller coalition partners). We'll wait for the name of the health minister (yet) - perhaps even a few weeks, but it's already clear that... things will happen.