Committee of Grzegorz Braun "God Bless You!"
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Committee of Grzegorz Braun "God Bless You!" KWW Grzegorza Brauna „Szczęść Boże!” | |
|---|---|
| Chairman | Wiktor Węgrzyn |
| Founder | Grzegorz Braun |
| Founded | 2015 |
| Dissolved | 2015 |
| Succeeded by | Confederation of the Polish Crown |
| Headquarters | 02-672 Warszawa Domaniewska 22 lok. U-6[1] |
| Ideology | Traditional conservatism[2] Polish nationalism[3] Monarchism[2] |
| Political position | Right-wing[4] to far-right[5] |
| Religion | Roman Catholic[6] |
| Colors | Red[2] |
| Website | |
| grzegorzbraun2015.pl | |
Committee of Grzegorz Braun "God Bless You! (Polish: Komitet Wyborczy Wyborców Grzegorza Brauna „Szczęść Boże!”) was a Polish electoral committee founded by Grzegorz Braun for the 2015 Polish parliamentary election. Wiktor Węgrzyn was the chairman of the electoral committee.[7] The committee's name, Szczęść Boże, referred to a religious Polish greeting that became the trademark of Braun's rhetoric.[8]
Prior to founding the electoral committee, Grzegorz Braun became known as a controversial right-wing publicist and film director.[9] He was an opposition activist during the Polish People's Republic, and wrote for the conservative Fronda magazine in the 1990s. In 2007, he entered politics when he sought to run for the Senate in the 2007 Polish parliamentary election on the electoral list of League of Polish Families, but failed to collect enough signatures.[3] He ran in the 2015 Polish presidential election, where he received 0.83% of the popular vote, finishing 8th in the first round.[9] In the run-off, he endorsed Andrzej Duda, the candidate of Law and Justice.[10] During the presidential campaign, he would become famous for his common use of the phrase "Szczęść Boże", which came to be the committee's name.[11]
Despite the underwhelming performance, his presidential candidacy made Braun recognizable. Taking advantage of his notoriety,[12] Braun founded the electoral committee for the parliamentary election that was to take place the same year. The Committee of Grzegorz Braun "God Bless You!" was registered in August 2015, and its candidate lists for the Sejm were registered in 12 of the 41 constituencies (following the withdrawal of lists in the Bydgoszcz and Krosno constituencies). Braun planned to expand the electoral committee into a political party.[13]
In one of the Świętokrzyskie constituencies, the committee's candidate (Artur Augustyn) also ran for the Senate. The committee's lists mainly featured independents who did not belong to any political party, though party activists were also included . In two constituencies, the lists were headed by politicians from the Jedność Narodu party (Tadeusz Marczak and Andrzej Zapałowski – however, the list featuring the latter was deregistered before the election).
In addition, the lists also included several activists from the Congress of the New Right (most of whom stood independently or on the lists of the Kukiz’15 committee) and the League of Polish Families (which did not support any committee in the elections), as well as a few members of the Union of Real Politics, Sovereign Poland, the National Movement, the Roman Dmowski's National Party, Wspólnota, Law and Justice, Dzielny Tata and the People's-National Alliance (Polish: Przymierze Ludowo-Narodowe).
Among those running for the Committee of Grzegorz Braun "God Bless You!" in the Kraków constituency were Ryszard Kozłowski and Stanisław Papież. Grzegorz Braun himself did not stand as a candidate.[14] Sławomir Szarek was the committee's representative in Świętokrzyskie.[13]
In the 2015 parliamentary election, the committee secured 0.09% of the vote nationwide (coming 13th).[15] The movement's candidate for the Senate came 6th out of 7 candidates in the constituency.[16] The committee's performance was considered a failure.[17]
After the defeat of the committee, Braun founded the Wake-up Call (Polish: Pobudka), a grassroots organization; between 2016 and 2019, Grzegorz Braun focused on the Wake-up Call and his writing career, publishing 7 books within these three years.[12] In 2018, Braun joined Janusz Korwin-Mikke and the National Movement in founding a right-wing alliance to contest the 2019 European Parliament election in Poland, which came to be Confederation Liberty and Independence.[9]
