WARSAW — Bogdan Klich looked on as hundreds of protesters confronted a long line of impassive police officers ringing the Polish parliament. It was early Friday morning, not long after midnight, and Klich seemed a man in his element.

It wasn’t the first time the 57-year-old minority leader of the Polish senate had taken on his government. Klich led student strikes in 1980 and joined the underground opposing communist martial law later that decade. What he hadn’t expected was having to return to the streets again, 27 years after Poland’s break with communism.

“I always felt Polish democracy was based on strong foundations, and that no one would try to overturn that,” he said, as a small group of demonstrators called him over, worried the police might try to remove them. “I was wrong,” he said.

Hours earlier, tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Warsaw and other Polish cities to protest the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party’s effort to impose tighter political controls over the judicial system. The lower house of parliament, where PiS has a majority, adopted a law Thursday that would force all Supreme Court judges into retirement except those selected by the justice minister.

The law still has to be approved by the senate — but PiS has a majority there too, and there is little chance it will be blocked when deliberations begin Friday morning. The legislation also has to be signed by President Andrzej Duda, along with two other new laws giving the government control over the selection of judges. Duda supports the PiS program and is unlikely to veto the bills.

Unable to stop PiS in parliament, those opposed to the government have turned to street demonstrations, arguing that the new legislation will remove one of the last checks on the government. The protests Thursday evening were among the largest Poland has seen since PiS came to power in late 2015.

Since taking power, PiS has frequently sparked demonstrations as it purged the leadership of state-controlled companies, the diplomatic service, the military and public media, and battled for control of the country’s top constitutional court — part of a program by party leader Jarosław Kaczyński to reshape the country.

Until now, PiS has mostly shrugged them off; the only exception is a massive and spontaneous outburst by women in October, protesting the possible introduction of a more restrictive abortion law. PiS quickly backtracked.

PiS remains Poland’s most popular party, relying on support from older, conservative and rural voters. A new poll by the Kantar organization this week had PiS with 38 percent support, followed by Civic Platform (Klich’s party) with 19 percent. Another recent poll showed 52.6 percent of Poles oppose the government of Prime Minister Beata Szydło, with 38 percent in favor.

Lessons from the past

Poland’s opposition hopes the scale of Thursday’s protest is a turning point, and that instead of dissipating, the movement will grow.

Demonstrators set up tents in the square in front of parliament and settled in for what they felt would be a long confrontation. Like Klich, many of the older protesters were reliving their days of battling the communist government.

“In the 1980s I fought for a democratic country, and that’s why I’m here again,” said Maria Wojnicka, a 57-year-old teacher who traveled from Katowice in the country’s south to show her opposition. “This is like a horror movie. Even six months ago I didn’t think anything like this was possible. Now I’m afraid that Poland will again be a totalitarian country.”

Younger protesters with hipster goatees and funky T-shirts clumped up next to police barriers. “I don’t agree with what’s happening,” said Marta Magot, 27, a psychologist from Gdańsk, who was wrapped in a rainbow flag. “We’ll try on our own, but we need help from the European Union.”

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Brussels has sounded alarmed by what’s happening in Warsaw. The European Commission may launch an infringement procedure against Poland next week for breaking EU law, and could trigger Article 7 proceedings — a move that could end with Poland losing its voting rights as an EU member.

Such an outcome is unlikely because Poland’s ideological ally, Hungary, has promised to block any such action. “We stand by Poland and we call on the European Commission not to overstep its authority,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said in a statement Thursday.

The Commission is also wary of tying Poland’s democratic performance to the billions it gets in EU structural funds — although some West European countries are calling for such a step.

The government has brushed off both protesters and Brussels, arguing its reforms are needed to cleanse a dysfunctional justice system. “We won’t give in to pressure,” Szydło told parliament after it adopted the Supreme Court legislation. “We won’t be scared off by Polish and foreign defenders of elite interests.”

That doesn’t leave the opposition with much hope it can stop the government juggernaut through parliamentary means. “There’s not much of a chance,” Tomasz Grodzki, a Civic Platform senator, told the crowd outside parliament early Friday. “We’re like the Spartans at Thermopylae, because we’re a minority.”