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United Right (Poland)

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United Right (Poland)

The United Right (Polish: Zjednoczona Prawica [zjɛd.nɔˈt͡ʂɔ.na praˈvi.t͡sa], ZP), initially Fair Poland, (Polish: Sprawiedliwa Polska) refers to a parliamentary circle formed by Jarosław Gowin and Zbigniew Ziobro with their respective parties, Poland Together and United Poland. After their cooperation at 2015 Polish parliamentary election with the Law and Justice party, 'United Right' became a media label for the then-ruling right-wing political alliance of Law and Justice with its aforementioned partners in Poland.

The alliance was formed in 2014. The alliance initially took the form of a parliamentary club in the Sejm called Just Poland (alternatively translated as Fair Poland; Polish: Sprawiedliwa Polska) formed by politicians of Poland Together and United Poland. They then agreed to co-operate with the Law and Justice party (the Piast Faction were already incorporated with them) and joined Law and Justice's parliamentary club and electoral lists that same year, in time for the 2014 local elections and the 2015 parliamentary elections. United Right was transformed into an electoral alliance led by Law and Justice.

The alliance was in power from the 2015 elections to their defeat in the 2023 elections. It was opposed by the Civic Coalition, led by Civic Platform, since 2018.

Throughout the parliamentary term the coalition expanded its absolute majority by crossers of the floor from Polish People's Party, Civic Platform, Modern and Kukiz'15. A major factor was when in 2017, Poland Together merged with individual centre-right orientated defectors from The Republican Association, Civic Platform, Liberty, Law and Justice, Christian National Union, Polish People's Party and Kukiz'15 to form the Agreement Party centred around the leadership of Jarosław Gowin. In 2018, Free and Solidarity, a splinter group of Kukiz'15, joined the coalition. Its candidate for the 2018 Warsaw election was Patryk Jaki.

In the 2019 parliamentary election the alliance gained more votes, but due to appearance of the Confederation and The Left in Sejm and cooperation between the Civic Coalition, The Left, and the Polish Coalition in the Senate, it failed to increase its majority in Sejm and even lost their majority in the Senate.

In 2020 and 2021, the alliance has been affected by actions of rebellious MPs. This was in part caused by the results of 2019 parliamentary elections, whereby the Law and Justice representation was reduced to 199 MPs, whilst United Poland and Agreement increased their tallies to 18 MPs each. This led to the notion that it is enough for just some MPs in one of constituent parties (and not the whole party) to rebel and bring down the government. Inter-party rebellion occurred on several occasions, although never managing to dissolve the alliance or bring down the government.

The first such instances were during the preparations to the 2020 presidential election. The Agreement Party did not support the Law and Justice proposal on postal voting in these elections. A second crucial instance was when the near-total abortion ban was drafted, initiated by United Poland, but initially provoking some scepticism in the Law and Justice and the Agreement parties. The third major rift was during the proposed changes to animal rights' which sought to ban animal breeding for fur production and energy policies which proposed speeding up the reduction of coal production and the sudden suspension of the Ostrołęka power plant construction. Law and Justice had proposed the opposite policies in their election manifestos, but due to pressure from the leader of the party, Jarosław Kaczyński, and the European Commission, the policies were changed.

On 20 June 2021, the reactivation of the congress of the Republicans took place, with some Agreement members joining the Republican association and restructuring it into a party. The newly formed party subsequently joined the governing coalition as a full member. In response, the Law and Justice chairman Jarosław Kaczyński made a speech praising the new reformed party.

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