The Forward Poland Alliance, a junior partner in the governing coalition, will let 24,600 members choose five seats on its national executive for the first time, party chair Tiana Beier announced on Wednesday. The reversal came after a short video from the party’s Warsaw conference spread rapidly online, showing delegates refusing to applaud a leadership slate assembled by senior officials.
In the clip, branch delegate Rudolf Rácz-Szilágyi takes the microphone and asks who selected the candidates. When Beier answers that the executive did, the room erupts in chants of “Let us choose.” By Thursday morning, the video had been viewed 3.8 million times, according to figures shown on the party’s public social-media account.
The room changed the rules
Beier returned to the lectern minutes later and said the party would hold a secret ballot on 20 November, with each member receiving one vote through a secure party portal or at local offices. “I heard the room, and I will not ask our members to defend a process they had no part in,” she told delegates, as people stood and waved paper ballots above their heads.
The vote ends a six-week standoff between Beier’s leadership group and local organisers, who had demanded direct elections after three regional chairs were appointed without a member ballot. The argument had threatened to leave the party’s 27 members of parliament divided before negotiations on next year’s spending plan. On Wednesday, organisers said they had gathered 8,412 signatures for a vote.
We came here expecting another list handed down from above. We leave with a ballot in our hands.
Rudolf Rácz-Szilágyi, branch delegate
Under the new rules, candidates must secure 300 member endorsements by 12 November, and campaigning will close two days before voting. The party says the ballot will cost 3.2 million złoty (about €740,000), paid from its central campaign reserve. Results are due on 21 November, with the new executive taking office before parliament resumes its winter session.
A test beyond the party hall
The footage has turned a procedural dispute into a public test of whether the alliance can keep its local base while governing from Warsaw. Hélène Fortin, a political analyst at the fictional Vistula Policy Centre, said the change was “a real concession, not a cosmetic promise”, but warned that a contested count could reopen the fight. The party’s electoral committee says observers from every candidate’s team may attend.
Supporters gathered outside the conference centre on Thursday, hugging and calling relatives as organisers carried boxes of signed membership forms to a registration desk. “People who had stopped coming to meetings are asking how to vote,” said Tiana Beier. Opponents of the change stayed away from the celebration, saying the new ballot risks rewarding the best-funded faction.
The stakes reach beyond the party’s internal offices. Its parliamentary group is needed to pass the coalition’s proposed housing and local-transport package, and legislators are due to begin budget negotiations later this month. Beier said the vote would not alter the party’s coalition agreement, but promised that executive candidates must publish their positions on the spending plan.
For now, delegates who had arrived expecting a routine leadership session are describing the moment as a breakthrough. The party’s next test is practical: confirming its membership register, approving the candidates and getting ballots to members across Poland before 20 November. The clip that began as a challenge to the leadership has made that timetable impossible to ignore.
