Headline October 03, 2018/ '' 'POLAND'S -POLITICAL- POINTERS' ''

'' 'POLAND'S -POLITICAL- POINTERS' ''

FOR WOULD BE Warsaw mayor Patryk Jaki, allowing Muslims into Poland poses a threat akin to the Nazi invasion of 1939.

His opponent, Rafal Trzaslowski, agrees the country faces an existential threat, but says it comes from Jaki and his allies.

The two men epitomise the divisions that have riven Poland since the ruling Law and Justice [PiS]  party, in which Jaki serves as deputy justice minister , took power in 2015.

Local elections in Oct 21 will be the first big contest between PiS and the Europhile Civic Platform opponents since then and its outcome will influence European Parliament elections in May and Poland's next general election in 2019.

It is apart of a larger struggle over Europe's future, as Brexit and Hungary's Viktor Orban, a PiS ally, shake up the European Union and right-wing parties make gains across the continent.

While PiS dominates the national politics, Civic Platform and its allies still control 15 of Poland's 16 regional assemblies and most of its big cities, giving them a say on issues from who runs a local school or theatre to how large EU funds are spent.

Success would let PiS claim popular support for judicial reform which the EU says undermine the rule of law.

The part also opposes abortion, contraception and IVF treatment and wants culture and education to be more conservative.

Warsaw, a bastion of liberalism and scene of protests against political influence over the judiciary, would be the biggest prize.

Jaki, 33,says he sides with ordinary people against what he describes as an arrogant Civic Platform municipal elite.

''Warsaw is ruled today by people who want to say you're inferior,'' he told a cheering crowd this month in front of low-rent apartment blocks. ''I am not ashamed of these blocks. We are not ashamed of this Warsaw.''

He scoffs at what he calls the European Union's ''focus on trivial matters, such as measuring a banana or instructions on how to use welles'' echoing criticism levelled by British anti-EU  campaigner Boris Johnson that EU officials term ''Euromyths''.

Trzaskowski, 46, a long time EU emissary for his party says,  he wants his native Warsaw to remain to remain ''open, tolerant and European''.

Jaki says Trzaskowski is out of touch and that if  Catholic Poland goes along with EU plans to distribute asylum-seekers  across the block it will become Islamised.

''Stopping Islamisation is my Westerplatie,'' he said in an interview with Plus Minus weekly and on Twitter last year, referring to the peninsula where Poland tried to fend off the Nazi invasion that triggered World War Two.

Poland joined the  European Union in 2004 after decades of  Soviet domination and there is little popular appetite for leaving it.

But PiS has zeroed in on deep-rooted fears of  foreign meddling and the EU's threat of sanctions over its judicial reforms could boost its support.

Trzaskowski labels PiS and its allies anti-European populists. ''They want to rewrite the history books and question our place in the European Union,'' he told Reuters.

''This is in a sense an existential fight.'' Recent polls suggest a close-run race, with around a dozen other candidates far behind Jaki and Trzaskowski.

Jaki belongs to Solidarna Polska, a party allied with PiS, but launched the campaign ruling party's  convention in September and faithfully echoes its nationalist message.

As a deputy justice minister, he championed a law that made it a crime to suggest Poland was complicit in the Holocaust. He has said Poles should be proud not ashamed, of their wartime record.

Following string criticism at home and abroad, the law was later watered down by removing the threat of jail terms.

Born in Opole in southwestern Poland, Jaki grew up in a Soviet era apartment block and presents himself as somebody with lowly origins to project a guy-next-door image.

But Trzaskowski speaks six languages and holds a doctorate in political science.

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