Poland holding election on Sunday

Warsaw, Poland, Oct. 15 : Poland is holding an election Sunday that many view as its most important one since the 1989 vote that toppled communism. At stake are the health of the nation's democracy, its legal stance on LGBTQ+ rights and abortion, and the foreign alliances of a country on NATO's eastern flank that has been a crucial ally to Ukraine.

Political experts say the election will not be fully fair after eight years of governing by a conservative nationalist party that has eroded checks and balances to gain more control over state institutions, including the courts, public media and the electoral process itself.

Opponents of the ruling Law and Justice party fear it could be their last chance to preserve the constitutional system won at great cost through the struggle of many Poles, from former President Lech Walesa to the millions who supported his Solidarity movement.

The election "will decide the future of Poland as a country of liberal democracy, a system that has been a guarantor of Polish success for the last three decades," the editor of the Rzeczpospolita newspaper, Boguslaw Chrabota, wrote in a Friday editorial.

Supporters of the ruling party, however, are afraid that if Law and Justice is voted out, the opposition would take the country in a more liberal direction, including with new laws legalizing abortion and civil unions for same-sex partners.

Women in Poland currently have the right to abortions only in cases of rape or incest, or if there is a threat to their life or health. "I'm afraid that I'll wake up after the elections and there will be such a change that, for example, abortion will be promoted (and) LGBT," said civil servant Bozena Zych, 57, after leaving a Catholic church located in a hipster area of Warsaw filled with gay-friendly establishments. (AP)