
Poland, protests
Thousands of Poles took to the streets in Warsaw Sunday in protest against the national conservative ruling party, PiS. The country’s former prime minister and leader of the centrist opposition party, Donald Tusk, took the lead in parts of the demonstration. “When I see these hundreds of smiling faces, I have a good feeling that we are on the verge of a breakthrough in the history of our homeland,” Tusk told the crowd during a speech at the demonstration, according to the news agency TT, which also quotes one of the city’s spokespeople, Monika Beuth, as saying that about a million people gathered in the capital. She called the demonstration the “largest in Warsaw’s history”. However, the public television station TVP quoted the police as saying that there have been 100,000 participants. Reuters reports that independent media observers call TVP the government’s “mouthpiece”. The protests come two weeks before elections are due to be held in Poland in the autumn. In the forthcoming Polish elections, the opposition hopes to put an end to almost eight years of nationalist rule in Poland. /ritzau/Reuters/