Young rebels upset politics in central and eastern Europe An election billboard displaying a picture of presidential candidate Radoslav Procházka in Bratislava, Slovakia Kacper Poblocki began his political journey five years ago protecting public parks in the Polish city of Poznan from being turned into high-rise construction sites. Today, he heads a rapidly-expanding coalition of local, grass roots campaign groups challenging the right-left hegemony in Polish politics. Mr Poblocki and his Alliance of Urban Movements are part of a political trend bubbling up around central and eastern Europe, as a post-communist youth rebels against what it sees as an aged, disconnected political elite that has changed little, and is little changed, for decades. People are tired of the same discourse, the same faces. For 25 years, not a lot has changed . . . Their time is over," says Mr Poblocki, whose loose collection of urban movements is supporting 1,000 candidates across 11 cities in Poland's local elections this weekend. "I noticed that there were a number of these small, very local movements trying to stop urban developments," he says. Now we understand that waging many separated local struggles is pointless and that we need to change the law and this can be done only at the national level. Mr Poblocki estimates that locally-focused urban movements, could win as many as 20 per cent of seats in some of Poland's larger cities and could secure control of at least one city council or mayor's office. His party appeals to the generation that was born as the Berlin Wall fell and are now 25 years old. They are more globally aware than their parents, know only of democracy, and resent a political class that in many countries features many of the same faces that were present in 1989. Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic's accession to the European Union in 2004 fuelled a boom in urbanisation on the back of strong economic growth. That both concentrated the countries" growing, politically-engaged middle classes in cities, and put strains on their creaky infrastructure. That created the perfect scenario for urban political movements to develop, Mr Poblocki says. He cites the success of "Zit Brno," an activist website in the Czech Republic's second-largest city of Brno, as an example for the rest of central and eastern Europe. The activist group, which loosely translates as "Living Brno," won the largest number of votes in the city's assembly election last month, securing nine of the assembly's 45 seats, and formed the linchpin of a ruling coalition. And in Hungary's capital, Budapest, a group of volunteers and activists called The City is For All is campaigning to overturn laws that make homelessness illegal. Voters across the region shun traditional parties with their clear ideological divides and search for alternatives. These political alternatives have only one thing in common: they promise that they will do things differently Otilia Dhand, Teneo Intelligence "Voters across the region shun traditional parties with their clear ideological divides and search for alternatives," says Otilia Dhand, vice-president at Teneo Intelligence, a political risk consultancy. These political alternatives have only one thing in common: they promise that they will do things differently. During the same weekend Poland will vote, neighbouring Slovakia goes to the polls for its local election, where a six-month-old party hopes to inflict a few wounds on Prime Minister Robert Fico. Siet, led by the urbane and frank Radoslav Procházka, grabbed 12 per cent of national polls within a month of its formation, and is pitching itself as the party of choice for a disenfranchised Slovak youth. "The one distinguishing aspect of our effort is that it is generational," Mr Procházka said. There is a strong demand for a new generation. "Regardless of the [election] result, we have managed to engage with hundreds of young people that want to participate," Mr Procházka, who came a close third in the country's recent presidential election, told the Financial Times. They have been offered as candidates people that have been around for 20 years. In Poland, the elections represent the first test for the country's new prime minister, Ewa Kopacz, who took charge of the ruling Civic Platform party-led coalition in late September. A recent poll showed Ms Kopacz's centre-left party holds a narrow lead over its main rightwing opposition, but that 30 per cent of respondents are undecided over who to vote for. The poll in Slovakia will also be the first ballot box test for Mr Fico since he lost his bid to become president in March. Mr Fico, who has been prime minister in Slovakia for six of the past eight years, has spent the past two months rolling out more than a dozen new populist measures, such as free trains for pensioners. "In Slovakia, independents and small parties may take an outsized proportion of seats in local legislatures and thereby signal Fico's loss of political invincibility," says Ms Dhand.