Polish opposition party chooses historian Karol Nawrocki as presidential candidate

Poland's conservative Law and Justice party, which is trying to regain momentum after losing power last year, has chosen historian Karol Nawrocki as its candidate for next year's presidential election.

The decision caps a weekend during which the country's two largest parties announced their candidates for an election that will decide the successor to incumbent President Andrzej Duda, whose second and final term ends in August 2025.

41-year-old Nawrocki has led the Institute of National Remembrance since 2021, a state body that houses archives and researches the crimes of World War II and the communist era.

He previously served as the director of the Museum of the Second World War in Gdansk, the city where he was born.

"I am ready to become your president. I am ready because I have been with you all my life. I am next to you, I know Poles and I understand your needs. Yes, I am one of you. I want to become your president because I know and understand that Poland, in order to be, must be great, because we have to defend Poland," he told supporters in Krakow.

The party bypassed seasoned politicians including former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki to tap the lesser-known Nawrocki to run for the highest office, similar to the way it chose Duda a decade earlier.

"The party decided to field a non-partisan, independent candidate, a candidate that many of our prominent activists, including the top ones, did not know closely," party leader Jarosław Kaczyński told those gathered at the same event in Krakow.

Had Kaczyński tapped Morawiecki or another high-level party member who held a government role from 2015-23, it could have made the corruption scandals of that period a key focus of the campaign.

Kaczyński stated in an interview months