September 19, 2007 (the date of publication in Russian)
Grigory Tinsky
THE GAMES OF THE TWINS
Warsaw as the birthplace of New Inquisition
The political life of Poland is shaken with an unusually hectic parliamentary crisis. The whole population is fascinated with a political detective story of a sitcom style. The Prosecutor's Office displays computer reconstruction of evidence, features authentic video records shot from a camera, planted on the roof of a tall hotel building, and broadcasts an intercepted talk of the main characters of the exposure. Suspects are handcuffed, witnesses interrogated, documental proof made public in live air.
The names of disgraced officials include recent top figures of the Polish establishment – Janusz Kaczmarek, ex-Minister of Interior; Konrad Kornatowski, ex-head of the Chief Police Department; Jaromir Netzel, ex-president of the state-owned Polish Insurance Association; Ryszard Krauze, one of the three richest citizens of Poland.
Andrzej Lepper, ex-Vice premier and leader of Self-Defense Party, and Zbigniew Zebro, the incumbent Minister of Justice and a famous corruption-fighter, are today starring in secondary roles of the scandal. Episodic roles are played by MPs, lawyers, journalists, and judges.
WALESA'S FORECAST: "EVERYTHING WILL GO TO THE BOTTOM"
Twin brothers Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, resp. President and Prime Minister, came to power in 2005 under the slogans of "moral revolution". Streets were decorated with billboards, strikingly reminding Soviet-time "socialist realistic art", featuring Lech Kaczynski, staring in the distance, with a caption "Principles Oblige". What are those principles, and what kind of obligations has been assumed by the Polish "moral revolutionaries"?
The Right and Justice (PiS) Party, headed by the Kaczynskis, was established as a strongly nationalist organization, excessively exploiting religious Catholic rhetoric in social-populist propaganda. Major slogans ran as follows: "If a person owns a fortune, he must have got it from somewhere", "Poland – not for the filthy rich", "Poland should be solidary, not liberal". Lech Kaczynski was positioning himself as a strong and decent fighter for justice and against oligarchs (this term, introduced in Russia by Boris Berezovsky, successfully penetrated into the Polish political vocabulary), displaying touching concern about every Pole.
PiS's electorate was predominantly comprised of rural low-educated citizens of the elder generation. The party exploited the high voting activity of this category, as well as its ideological features, bearing the birthmarks of Polish chauvinism, such as Russophobia, Germanophobia, and anti-Semitism. During the election campaign, the future President openly boasted that his shoe had never touched the German land, and that his hand had never shaken a German hand. For a national leader of an EU country, that sounded somewhat extravagant.
Lech Wałęsa, the direct political ancestor of the Kaczynskis, once the hero of Solidarność Movement, later the hero of popular anecdotes now alienated from political life, with a talent of speaking Polish not exceeding Russia's ex-premier Victor Chernomyrdin's talent of speaking Russian, was supposed to become a hearty supporter of the Kaczyńskis. However, this ardent Catholic delivered a pessimistic forecast as far back as in October 2005: "In case Kaczyński wins, everything will go to the bottom. Poland will be the loser, as well as PiS itself, as the Kaczyńskis are able only to destroy but not to construct".
Wałęsa's prophecy came true very soon: none of the political initiatives, undertaken by the victorious twins, was successful.
PARANOIC FEARS
The first step on the path towards "moral purification of the Polish society" was the newly-introduced Lustration Law, adopted by the coalitional majority of the Sejm.
The earlier legislation on the subject was relatively moderate. Any Pole, receiving a post in the executive power or in the municipal bodies, was to confess of his former cooperation with USSR-time special services if it took place, his reputation thus undergoing only moral damage. In case the fact of cooperation was concealed and later revealed by the specially established Tribunal of Lustration, the exposed politician was stripped of his post or parliamentary mandate, and forever deprived of an opportunity of political career.
The newly-introduced law significantly expanded the category of lustratable persons, now including also teachers, journalists and any other professions, regarded as "socially important". The procedure of testing was also severed. Every politician, scholar or reporter was now to fill a special "lustration form", containing a whole list of data on himself and his relatives, and to give an oath of "non-cooperation".
The adoption of the amended law aroused a strong public reaction both inside and outside Poland. Leading European media characterized the Kaczynskis as paranoid, interpreting the legislative innovation as "new inquisition". The Polish society was polarized and split. Eventually, the new law was contested by the Constitutional Tribunal. Shortly after this defeat of the twins, the State Election Committee rejected PiS's financial account for year 2005. The impeccably fair brothers appeared to have grossly violated the national law, accepting financial assistance from institutions, including foreign foundations. The ruling party was facing illegitimacy, and its base of social support started shrinking.
Faced with this challenge, the Kaczynskis decided that the best way of defense is an offensive. On April 25 morning, servicemen from the Domestic Security Agency slammed into the apartment of Barbara Blida, former Minister of Construction (until 1996), in order to accuse her of large-scale corruption. However, the scandal achieved a tragic outcome: the woman shot herself during the search in her home. The Agency was blamed for outrage and unsubstantiated persecution of political opponents. The political effect was opposite to the expectations.
THE METHODS AND THE RESULTS
The paradox of the Kaczynski rule was a typically Bolshevist method of behavior of the political force, positioning itself as radically anti-Communist. This parallel is also expressed in the foundation of a special Institute of People's memory, as well as in the propaganda of the PiS-protected Radio Maria.
The Institute of People's Memory was officially established for the purpose of persecution of persons involved in crimes against the people and the nation. Atypically for a scientific institution,
it included a special Prosecutor's Office. The parallel system of prosecution was engaged in digging in the archives of the XX century, launching criminal cases against "backers of the Communist regime", and conveying relevant materials to courts.
Radio Maria, headed by monk Tadeusz Rydzyk, enjoys a broad audience in Poland, comparable with the scope of the Kaczynskis' electorate. The influence of this mass medium should not be underestimated. Rev. Tadeusz's rhetoric echoes PiS's ideology, including the emphasis on anti-oligarchism, anti-Semitism, and hatred towards Russia and Germany. Neither liberal politicians nor the Kaczynskis themselves would dare to disagree with the priest, representing the Redemptionist Order, the most fundamentalist of the Catholic congregations.
Transforming Warsaw into a stronghold of "new inquisitors", the Kaczynskis literally ousted dozens of thousands young Poles from the country. The new émigrés moved mostly to Great Britain, Ireland and Germany. For the first time in the history of new Poland, emigration was motivated not by economic but with ideological reasons. It has to be emphasized that due to generous donations from the EU, in accordance with special conditions for Poland wrung out yet by Alexander Kwasniewski, the economic situation is rather stable.
The decline of PiS's popularity was verified by regular public polls of the Public Opinion Research Institute, a highly reputed institution since Kwasniewski's times. By summer 2007, the party lagged behind the oppositionist Civil Platform by 10 per cent. In order to reverse the tendency, the twins repeatedly undertook a strong propagandist move, accusing Vice Prime Minister Andrzej Lepper of corruption and ousting him from the Government.
TO DIE FOR THE SAKE OF THE QUADRATIC ROOT
The style of foreign policy of Kaczynskis' Poland shocked the whole European community with its demonstrative neglect of common European values, use of law enforcement bodies in political struggle, as well as the paranoid lustration campaign. This controversy was enhanced with the political debate over the US strategy in Iraq. On the contrary to the majority of European states which denounced the reckless military campaign of the United States, Poland displayed demonstrative compliance with George W. Bush's policy.
Quite naturally, EU politicians expected new surprises from Poland on the eve of the EU summit in Brussels in June 2007. On the eve of this event, the Polish Government delivered a number of high-sounding statements.
The political controversy was heating on the background of the debate around the European Constitution. At that time, the EU was chaired by Germany – the declared arch-enemy of the Kaczynskis. Taking responsibility for improvement of the mechanism of decision-making in the EU in the context of the newly-prepared European Treaty, Berlin introduced the principle of "double majority", suggesting direct proportional dependence of the number of votes from a particular state from its population size. The proposed mechanism of decision-making also excluded the right of veto, earlier successfully used by Warsaw for blocking the Russia-EU General Agreement under the pretext of Russia's restrictions for imports of Polish meat.
Realizing that the notorious "veto liberum", favored by the Polish nobility for ages, is going to be abolished, the Kaczynskis invented the so-called "quadratic root principle", suggesting that the number of representatives from each country in the EU be proportional not to its population size but to the square root from this number. Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski even declared that Poland "is ready to die for the sake of the quadratic root".
It is noteworthy that in Polish political culture, the expression "to die for the sake of" has got a very special historical meaning. In 1939, when the Nazi troops attacked Gdansk, the Polish government appealed to Great Britain for help. However, Winston Churchill replied that Britain "is not going to die for the sake of Gdansk". This remark was never forgotten by the Poles.
Thus, the legislative issue acquired a pathetic echo, referring to the heroic times of the war. However, that was not enough for Jaroslaw Kaczynski: at the beginning of the summit in Brussels, he declared that in case Germany did not exterminate lots of Poles during the war, Poland's population would comprise today not 39 millions but over 66 millions. In this way, he interpreted the "quadratic root principle" as compensation for Poland for the damage of World War II. In her turn, Poland's Foreign Minister Anna Fotyga discussed the possibility of denunciation of the 1953 Declaration of the Polish People's Republic, which suspended the demands of military reparations and financial compensation for the war damage.
Yet in his capacity of Mayor of Warsaw, Lech Kaczynski estimated the war damage in $45bln. This figure conveys the scale of compensations the Poles are going to demand for the six years of war.
In addition, Jaroslaw Kaczynski ceased the negotiations over return of a part of the displaced cultural property, characterizing relevant requests from the German side as "typical German arrogance".
On the eve of the Brussels summit, the Prime Minister told Polish press that in case the EU fails to accept the Poland-proposed "quadratic root principle", Poland will use the right of veto and thus disorganize the whole work over the new European Treaty.
The behavior of the twins created a whole mess at the summit, when the EU leaders found out – not immediately – that instead of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the Premier and the constitutional head of the state, Warsaw was represented by his twin brother Lech Kaczynski. The trick, surprisingly witty for the narrow-minded brothers, caused a ridiculous situation: from time to time, Jaroslaw pulled out his mobile phone to talk with his brother, and EU leaders queued for this mobile phone to address Jaroslaw in an attempt to convince him to mitigate his demands.
TO MILK THE COW, TO EAT THE COW AND THEN TO SELL THE COW
In his interview to La Repubblica, Italy's Prime Minister Romano Prodi stated that "the Poles humiliated the dignity of Europe by making a theatric performance from multilateral negotiations". In her turn, Germany's General Chancellor Angela Merkel told the twins that in case of their reluctance for a compromise, the EU will convene a new conference without their participation.
This was a strong warning, and the Kaczynskis had to retreat. The sum of E80bln, allocated by the EU for the Polish budget, was a too valuable trump to continue the political circus.
At the subsequent session of the European Parliament, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, leader of the Green faction, said, "I am very glad that the new European Treaty envisages the conditions of exit from the EU. We are not going to coerce anyone to common life. I am grateful to Chancellor Merkel, who called machos like Kaczynski brothers to order. In Europe, there are some governments which dislike Europe: they would like first to milk the cow, then to eat the cow, and then to sell it".
The results of the "theatric performance" were expectable: Poland's "quadratic root" was not adopted. Still, Lech Kaczynski declared a "triumphal victory" of Polish diplomacy. He claimed that instead the right of veto, he "managed to introduce a new brake switch – the Yanina Amendment".
In accordance with the "Yanina Amendment" (named after the Greek town of Yanina), in case a number of countries, encompassing at least 26.25% of the EU population, express disaccord with a particular joint decision, it may be postponed "for a reasonable time". In Lech Kaczynski's interpretation, this "reasonable time" should comprise two years. He told the Poles that a "gentlemen's agreement" on this subject had been reached in Brussels.
However, Kaczynski's version is not confirmed documentarily or verbally. Hans-Gerd Pottering, Chairman of the European Parliament, told to Gazeta Wyborcza: "I believe this to be a misunderstanding. EU leaders could not agree for a two-year veto. This would be completely unacceptable. A reasonable term comprises two-three months". None of other participants of the talk, inquired by mass media, ever heard of a two-year term of the Yanina Amendment. The mandate letter on the draft European Treaty, signed by Kaczynski, does not contain a single word about it either.
This author has got his own explanation for this odd misunderstanding. Even for the scandalous twin brothers, such an arrogant lie to their own people would be too much. As a matter of fact, Lech Kaczynski could be misled with his own illiteracy. The last stage of the talks lasted until 4 a.m. In this situation, an exhausted interpreter could make an error, while the Polish president who speaks only his mother tongue could sign the mandate letter, being quite sure of his victory. According to an old Soviet anecdote, "you should know languages to avoid a beating".
Now, the banner, falling out from the plump hands of Lech Kaczynski, was seized by his Foreign Minister Anna Fotyga. At the summit of EU foreign ministers in Viana do Castelo, Portugal, on September 7-8, she was the only participant to introduce a whole list of draft amendments to the text of the European Treaty. Naturally, the Yanina Amendment in Warsaw's interpretation was among the endorsed provisions. Massimo d'Alema, Italy's Foreign Minister, reacted with irritation: "We will never concede to this nuclear bomb". On the eve of the event, addressing a party meeting in Salerno, he characterized the Polish Government as "obsolete nationalists".
Quotes from European politicians, denouncing the behavior of the Warsaw twins, could constitute a whole book. However, their message could be expressed in one phrase: under the command of the twins, Poland will always be isolated in the European Community. The fact that Warsaw enjoys sweetest relations with Washington, does not serve today as an argument in its favor.
(To be continued)
Number of shows: 1194
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