POLAND: Poland's snap general election ended yesterday as a battle royal between the generations. Young Poles cast off their political apathy and turned out in their millions, causing a shortage of ballot papers around the country.
It was a young army of voters determined not to leave the result, and the fate of their country, to their parents and grandparents as they did in 2005.
Then, just 40 per cent of voters cast their ballot, with an over-representation of the older, hardy supporters of Jaroslaw Kaczynski's Law and Justice (PiS) party.
With just 27 per cent of the vote - 10 per cent of the total electorate - PiS won that election. Young Polish voters say have been living with the consequences since: two long years of Europe talking about Poland for all the wrong reasons.
By shaking off their lethargy, young voters appeared to have achieved their goal last night: the first exit polls last night showed PiS ousted from power and replaced with the Civic Platform (PO), the liberal, pro-business and more EU-friendly opposition party.
"The Kaczynskis are just embarrassing, that's why I volunteered for the PO campaign," said Aleksander Siemaszko (20). "My parents voted for PiS and we argued about it. We both want the same thing, to develop Poland, but disagree completely about how to do it."
However, older Poles were not for turning. For them, Mr Kaczynski is the first politician to speak their language: the patriotic tone promising a strong Poland they remember from before the second World War.
They were ridiculed by their grandchildren and even became the target of a viral marketing campaign. The campaign centred on a young voter, sick at the thought of another election decided by an army of grannies, sent a text to friends urging them to "hide granny's ID" to prevent her voting for Mr Kaczynski.
The campaign ended up on television and, although there was no evidence of missing IDs yesterday, it injected some life into an otherwise humourless and bitter campaign.
"When I asked my students two years ago if they were voting, I got a groan," said Dr Maciej Duszczyk, deputy director of the Institute of Social Policy at Warsaw University. "This time when I asked, I got an enthusiastic 'yeah'."
For many voters, the crucial moment in the campaign came when the mild-mannered PO leader, Donald Tusk, launched an all-out attack on Mr Kaczynski in a television debate watched by 10 million Poles. He painted Mr Kaczynski - a bachelor without a driver's licence or a bank account who lives with his elderly mother - as a man out of touch with reality who had tarnished Poland's image abroad and not delivered on promises at home. Then Mr Tusk laid into Mr Kacyznski's unpredictable political style, recounting an episode in the 1990s when Mr Kaczynski allegedly pulled a gun on him in a parliamentary corridor, reportedly remarking: "I could kill you as easy as spit on you."
Within hours, the first opinion polls had shown a final swing in favour of Mr Tusk's PO. "Tusk is infinitely preferable to Kaczynski," said Prof Duszczyk. "Even so, many young people still have reservations about him."
Last night, the first concerns emerged about how a PO government would rule. After a vicious, personality-driven campaign, much PO policy remains a grey area: reform plans for taxes are vague, as are its plans to re-establish trust with EU neighbours.
Many voters were turned off by how PO supported several controversial PiS campaigns, in particular their battle to throw open incomplete communist-era secret police files on prominent Poles. The campaign claimed several prominent victims, including the candidate for Archbishop of Warsaw, but critics called it a "witch-hunt" and it was stopped by Polish courts.
Other voters are uneasy at the PO plan to retain the politicised anti-corruption police force created by the Kaczynskis, with new operational guidelines.
Consequently, some younger voters say they see a PO complicity in the Kaczynski government extremes. "I couldn't vote for PO," said Tomasz Markiewicz, a lecturer at Warsaw University. "They are just PiS light."