Welcome to this week’s Great Game – your weekly geo-political overview. This time around, we will cover a couple of current issues:

Polish Election Shocker

Europe was shocked when the first exit polls from the Polish parliamentary election hit the news on Sunday. Everybody expected the PiS party to be the biggest party and in a position to form a comfortable coalition government, but the Polish electorate wanted differently. The emerging centre-left coalition led by Donald Tusk’s Civic Coalition have enough votes to take power if they can agree on a common platform. The result was greeted with joy in Brussels and across most European governments, since the PiS have a mixed reputation across the continent due to their questionable legal and political reforms that many in the EU apparatus viewed as sidelining the Polish democracy and rule of law with little regard for threats and complaints from Brussels. Donald Tusk heralded this a new era for Poland and a “return” to greatness and democracy for the country. We will have to see what the potential coalition can come up with, but there is little doubt that leaders across Europe are relieved and looking forward to dealing with Tusk rather than the dreaded Kaczynski of PiS.

The liberal opposition will begin