Who is the most popular politician in Poland today? Not, as you might expect, the new prime minister, Donald Tusk, nor is it the defeated leader of the opposition, Jarosław Kaczyński. It is not the president, Andrzej Duda, an ally of Kaczyński’s arch-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, which ran Poland for eight years before elections last October. No, the most popular politician in Poland is the newly elected speaker of the parliament, Szymon Hołownia.
Even keen observers of Polish politics can be excused for not having heard of Hołownia, as he is a newcomer to Poland’s legislature, the Sejm. He is famous in Poland but not, until recently, for political reasons. For more than a decade, he was the co-host of the TV show Poland’s Got Talent!.
