October 31, 2007 (the date of publication in Russian)
Grigory Tinsky
THE DOOM OF THE FOURTH REPUBLIC
The utopia of Kaczynski twins has collapsed
RECOVERY FROM THE "DUCK DISEASE"
Poland is overcoming the toxic "duck disease". The crisis has passed away, and the temperature is almost normal, though a complete remission is still ahead. The scathing election defeat of Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc (Law and Justice) Party, chaired by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, has revealed massive disappointment of the population with the policy that dominated during the last years.
The outcome remained unclear until the decisive day. The election campaign was ruthlessly tense, involving all the participants into warfare of ideas, smear and political technologies to a degree unprecedented in Poland. In the earlier piece entitled "The Game of the Twins" (part 1 and part 2) we described the situation before the elections, as well as the reasons for a double contraction of the term of the parliament, elected as recently as in 2005.
Though public polls displayed an almost equal electoral support of the two major contenders for the victory, Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc and Platforma Obywatelska (Civic Platform), the logic of the political process provided an advantage to the latter party. Quite naturally, the ruling party of Jaroslaw Kaczynski started the campaign in the most aggressive style, staking at exposure of corruption in the ranks of the opponents and thus trying to activate its own electorate and expand its base. This aggressive approach seemed to be efficient, the rating of Kaczynski's party growing to an extent which could be expected to enable the incumbent establishment to form a one-party government.
The smearing campaign, initiated by Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc, targeted primarily the former partners of the coalition, namely, the alliance of Andrzej Lepper's Samoobrona (Self-Defense) and Liga Polskich Rodzin (Legue of Polish Families). In this way, the Kaczynski brothers intended to consolidate the conservative electorate. Meanwhile, the ratings of other parties – Platforma Obywatelska, Lewica i Democraci (Leftists and Democrats), and Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe (Polish Popular Movement) did not significantly change, remaining respectively on the level of 30-32, 15-16, and 7-8 per cent.
FAKE BRIBES AND DRUNKEN ESCAPADES
At that moment, the Polish voters taught the incumbent party an illustrative lesson of social psychology. This happened when the successful multi-media crackdown on Andrzej Lepper's party, and arrests of its ministers along with the director of Central Police Authority, was followed with an attempt of Jaroslaw Kaczynski to discredit Civic Platform's leaders in a similar pattern.
This effort was launched with a press conference of Mariusz Kaminski, chair of Centralne Biuro Antykorupcyjne (Central Anti-Corruption Bureau). He used the TV air to display a video record featuring Beata Sawicka, a Civic Platform's MP, taking a bribe of 100,000 zloty (over $30,000), supposedly for election needs. The bribe was conveyed by a CACB operative, styled as a businessman eager to win a tender for a lucrative piece of land on the Hel Peninsula, a health resort area on the Baltic coastline adjacent to Gdynia.
If Jaroslaw Kaczynski were not so rabidly anti-Russian, he would recall a wise Russian proverb: "ot dobra dobra ne ishchut" (if you're well off – don't seek better). Confronted with the same stereotype of smearing as in the earlier case, the Polish voter realized that the anti-corruption fight is a merely political trick used for brainwashing the population. The 10% decline of the ruling party's rating was followed with a scathing defeat of Jaroslaw Kaczynski in the TV debates with Alexander Kwasniewski, ex-President and co-chair of the Leftist and Democrats, and with Donald Tusk, leader of the Civic Platform. Suddeutsche Zeitung sneered that Jaroslaw Kaczynski's appearance does not quite correspond with that required for the role of a Tribunus plebis: too short, fat, and mumbling. This time, the Poles agreed with this observation.
Kaczynski's self-inflicted flop was followed with another unexpected act of political self-destruction. This time, the voters were disappointed with the behavior of Alexander Kwasniewski, who showed up drunk at two public events – first, while delivering a lecture at the university of Kiev, Ukraine, and repeatedly, at a domestic campaign event.
This happened to the former President not for the first time. During the 2000 elections, all the TV channels featured Kwasniewski parodying Pope Johann Paul II while discharging from a helicopter. During his presidential tenure, he was seen drunk during a visit to the same Ukraine. Irritation is most efficiently achieved by iteration. The two consequent abuses cost the Leftists and Democrats at least 5 per cent of support, part of its electorate shifting to the Civic Platform. After the elections, Kwasniewski admitted his responsibility for the poor result of his party, and resigned.
On October 23, the State Election Commission publicized the official results of the elections. The Civic Platform gained 209 seats in the Sejm, outstripping Law and Justice (166), Leftists and Democrats (53), and Polish Popular Movement (31).
WHAT WILL THE GOVERNMENT LOOK LIKE?
In this year's campaign, the voters were much more active than two years ago. The two most popular parties garnered as many votes as all the parties in 2005. Law and Justice, though failing, have managed to expand its electorate by 2mln people, while Civic Platform gained more support than the 2005 sum of its own and Law and Justice's vote. The 7-million electorate of Civic Platform has renewed at least by two thirds, mostly for expense of the protest vote – which is proven by the fact that 500,000 of ex-supporters of Law and justice now chose the Civic Platform. Thus, the situation in the new Polish Sejm is actually bipolar, an almost equal number of MPs representing the rivaling sides – though with an obvious ideological advantage of the Civic Platform.
The announced coalition of the Civic Platform and the Polish Popular Movement is likely to deprive Law and Justice from influence on decision-making. In case the coalition gains support from the Leftists and Democrats, it will be able to collect the necessary two thirds of the vote to override Lech Kaczynski's presidential veto. Though the Leftists and Democrats are not supposed to acquire seats in the Government, this party's present leader, Wojciech Olejniczak, 33, successfully bargains for positions in state-run corporations in exchange for loyalty to the Civic-Popular coalition. The new Prime Minister is supposed to clean these posts from the incumbent Kaczynskyites. The Leftists and Democrats also contend for deputy posts in ministries.
Civic Platform's leader Donald Tusk, rather a theoretician and a political leader than an administrator, would definitely prefer the post of President to that of Prime Minister. However, he will have to wait for this opportunity till the next Presidential race in 2010. Civic Platform will definitely overtake the Ministers of Agroindustry, Ecology, and Infrastructure, according to typical spheres of this party's influence. The post of Minister of Interior is reserved for Tusk's closest ally Grzegorz Shetyna, the party's General Secretary.
In the distribution of other post in the Government, the choice of minister of Foreign Affairs and Defense is most significant for Russia's foreign policy interests. In any case, one of these two posts is guaranteed for Radoslaw Sikorski, who served as Minister of Defense between October 2005 and February 2007. His resignation was primarily a result of disaccord with the policy of Antoni Macierewicz, Director of Military Counterintelligence since October 2006 and author of the infamous Macierewicz Report, initiating a new witch-hunt disguised as a campaign against "Communist collaborates", but actually affecting most of the political figures of the elder generation. In the 2007 campaign, Sikorski preferred to run from the Civic Platform.
The coalition's foreign policy strategy is actually predetermined with the selection of Prof. Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, 85, for the role of the Prime Minister's Chief Foreign Policy Advisor. A former prisoner of Oswiecim, Bartoszewski took part in the Polish Resistance, was accused of espionage in Socialist in 1952 and exonerated in 1955. He is decorated with the highest state awards, as well as with a special award "The Just Man Among Peoples" from Yad Vashem Museum, Jerusalem, for salvation of Jews during the Nazi occupation of Poland. Unlike Anna Fotyga, the leaving Foreign Minister, whose main virtue was personal dedication to Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Prof. Bartoszewski has got a reputation of a high professional.
ATLANTICIST OR EUROPEAN?
The competition for the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs reflects a choice between the Atlanticist and European vectors of foreign policy.
Radoslaw Sikorski, born in 1963 in Bydgosc, is a postgraduate of Oxford, specializing in political sciences, philosophy and economics. From 1986 till 1989, he served as a military correspondent with The Spectator and The Observer in Afghanistan and Angola, later representing The Sunday Telegraph in Warsaw and simultaneously consulting New Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch. In 1998-2001, he was employed as Deputy Foreign Secretary in the rightist government of Jerzy Buzek. In 2002-2005, Sikorski was a member of Washington-based American Enterprise Institute and the executive director of New Atlantic Initiative. Both institutions are known as thinktanks of American neoconservatism, with an emphatically anti-Russian bias.
This is not surprising, regarding the profile of Mr. Sikorski's spouse, Anne Appelbaum, a deputy editor of London Evening Standard, a prize winner for a research entitled GULAG, with an impressing background of critical analysis of Soviet and Russian policy. Her column in Washington Post, focused on Vladimir Putin's speech at the International Security Conference in Munich, echoed the style of the open letter to President George W. Bush, signed by a number of influential political and public activists and timed to Bush's meeting with Vladimir Putin in Bratislava in 2005. In both cases, Bush was urged to "urge Mr. Putin to improve the situation in human rights and legitimacy", and to "make clear whether Russia's relationship with the US is about to improve or deteriorate".
During Sikorsky's employment with North Atlantic Initiative, this institution was also joined by Katerina Chumachenko, a US citizen and spouse of Ukraine's President Victor Yushchenko. On April 6, 2006, she delivered a public speech at the presentation of the Ukrainian version of Anne Appelbaum's GULAG book in Kiev.
Sikorsky's major rival is Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, 59, the present chair of the European Parliament's Foreign Policy Commission. He has graduated from the Lodz University and the Nancy University's European Center (France), later being active in Lech Walesa's Solidarnosc Movement. In 2006, this political scientist specializing in European integration was elected vice chairman of the largest alliance of EU parties, the European Popular Party.
AN ADVICE FROM OUTSIDE: TO IMITATE A CRAB
One more figure, determining the choice of Poland's foreign policy, was identified by Polityka weekly as "one of the three Poles who produced the strongest influence on the world's fate in the second half of the XX century", along with Pope John Paul II and Lech Walesa. This person, Zbigniew Brzezinski, is well known to Russians as well.
The essence of the political recipe for Poland, outlined in Brzezinski's latest book "The Choice: Domination, or Leadership", could be briefly interpreted as follows: under any circumstances, Poland has to serve as a faithful ally of the United States, realizing that its role is not higher as that of a third-rate ally. Still, in order not to become a burden for Washington, Poland should develop friendly relations with all the EU countries, especially with Germany, which is Washington's first-rate ally. Only in this way, according to Brzezinski, Poland would be able to resist to the menace from the East, as "Russia is on an uncertain stage of development; it hasn't made a decisive choice between real democracy, relying upon a civic state, and the centuries-old imperialism". Thus, Poland is urged to turn towards Europe, despite popular doubts related to loss of a part of sovereignty. "In order to receive something, you have also to concede something", Mr. Brzezinski says. He advises his native country to "behave as a small crab that crawls into a large shell and thus imitates a powerful monster, though this game could be guessed by the side from where the menace is rising".
The advice of Prof. Wladyslaw Bartoszewski "to pay the first visit not to Moscow and not to Berlin", addressed to the new Prime Minister, could be interpreted in this context. However, the experienced advisor may be pointing not at Washington but at Paris as the potential ideological center of the European Community.
OPTIMISTIC RESPONSE FROM BERLIN
The changes of the Polish political scene suggest certain improvement of the relations between Warsaw and Moscow, but not a breakthrough. The personal success of Donald Tusk is rather favorable for a Polish-German rapprochement.
Donald Tusk is an ethnic Kaszub. This minor Slavonic ethnic community has populated the territory of Eastern Prussia for centuries, undergoing an explicit Germanic influence. For that reason, the Kaszubs are commonly associated rather with Germans than with Slavs. Tusk's views have formed largely under the influence of Guenther Grass, a great German writer and a Nobel Prize winner.
Tusk, as well as Grass, was born in Gdansk (Danzig) – on April 22, 1957. In 1980, he graduated from Gdansk University's Faculty of History. His diploma was focused on the life of Jozef Pilsudski, Head of Polish State in 1918-1922 and Dictator of Poland in 1926-1935.
Tusk’s professional career started with journalism and political activity in the ranks of Solidarnosc. Since 1989, he is regularly elected to the Sejm, founding first the Liberal Democratic Congress, later the Alliance for Freedom. In 2000 Tusk, along with Maciej Plazynski and Andrzej Olechowski, founded the Civic Platform, which he later steered alone to this year's victory.
Donald Tusk is a classical liberal democrat, though of a pragmatic type. His success was celebrated in Germany, where he is respected not only in intellectual circles – as a writer and journalist, but also in the political establishment, including Angela Merkel. Bartoszewski's advice to select not Berlin but some different city for the first visit is thus explained with concerns that a too explicit gesture towards Germany may serve as a new pretext for accusations of pro-German orientation from political opponents.
However, Tusk's success is positively interpreted also in American press. In an editorial entitled "Poland Untwinned", The International Herald Tribune indicates that despite statements of Civic Platform's activists that Poland is going to distance itself from the United States to some extent, Washington should perceive the defeat of Jaroslaw Kaczynski with satisfaction. "Tusk has already made clear he will withdraw Polish soldiers from Iraq, and will agree to missile defenses only so far as they advance Poland's own security interests. Those shifts will not be universally welcomed in Washington. Everyone, however, should be pleased that Poland – the largest, most important former East Bloc country to have joined NATO and the European Union – has voted to embrace Europe, modern capitalism and its own best political traditions".
The same article characterizes the earlier rule of the Kaczynski brothers as follows: "The Kaczynskis spoke (…) for the hurts and resentments born of Poland's tragic 20th century history. The problem was that they often behaved as if that history was the exclusive property of their political party, and their belligerent, populist tone its only legitimate voice. The grudges and suspicions they nurtured extended not just to ex-Communists, but to Germans of all generations, foreign business leaders, secularists, intellectuals, and on and on. They fostered a climate of accusation and suspicion that divided Poland from its natural European partners and alienated the more forward and outward looking younger generation".
A FALLACY OF COMPOSITION
The above quoted conclusions are generally correct. However, in order to realize the significance of the political change, one should consider the political plans of the Kaczynski brothers which have not come true. The twins have declared the design of a Fourth Republic in the place of the existing Third Republic.
The First Republic emerged in Polish history in 1454, in a form of democracy of landowner gentry, and existed until the division of the country between other European nations. The Second Republic emerged in 1918, as a result of World War I, and existed until 1939.
Omitting the period of Polish Popular Republic of 1945-1989, modern politicians calculate the age of the Third Republic from year 1989. But the Kaczynski brothers denounced this definition, though it exists in the present Constitution. Accusing the Third Republic of corruption and "dependence from Soviet special services", they introduced the idea of the Fourth Republic, which meant a harsh lustration under the guise of "decommunization", along with "elevation of Poland's role in Europe".
This political line, based upon national phobias, scandalous behavior and egocentric self-isolation, was not approved by the people, and collapsed – and we should to congratulate the Polish people, as well as ourselves, with the escape from this nympholepsy.
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