Division of Poland according to Prof. Radoslaw Markowski
The most difficult and most important part of the political weather forecast for Poland is the PiS further destiny, as well as the domestic and foreign policy of that party. Division of the PiS policy into domestic and foreign has the same reasoning as such division of policy for the state. The thing is that Kaczyński — for the first time in Polish and perhaps in the European history of politics — attempts to conduct his own international policy (contradicting the official policy of governing coalition), being in the opposition to an acting government. However, we’d still start our analysis and prediction of the PiS policy from the internal state of affairs both in the party and in the country.
Split of PiS, which ripened since the very moment, when the results of presidential elections were voiced up — the elections that Kaczyński lost just as it was predicted. Joanna Kluzik-Rostkowska and Elżbieta Jakubiak — banished by the furious Jarosław — started to create their own social-political movement and their own Seim fraction named “Poland first of all”. Mind that latter is the electioneering motto of Kaczyński — the one that was a background for the group photography with these female party dissidents and Kaczyński himself. They’ve already been joined by ten well-known PiS functionaries, part of them being Seim deputies and another part — Euro-parliament deputies. It’s tough to predict how many members of the moderate PiS wing would adjoin the new movement. But one thing is clear: Kaczyński is losing his influence within the party and the partisan leadership change is at hand. There’s the only pretender for the leader’s throne — it is Zbigniew Ziobro. Brief characteristic of him was given in the previous part of the article. How can PiS change with his coming to power? Unfortunately, in that area the forecast is rather deplorable. Unlike the furiously passionate Kaczyński, Ziobro is a rational and sophisticated politico. He acts on the sly, effectively influencing his semi-insane chief and craftily convincing Kaczyński that in fact it was him who authored Ziobro’s artful combinations. Ziobro is a natural and only possible successor of Jarosław Kaczyński. Having become “number one” in the discredited party, which electoral support is comparable with the SLD resources, Ziobro would undoubtedly seek for the allies. Still, he’d be able to find them only in the ranks of marginal mini-parties, which are headed by quite popular Polish politicians like Marek Jurek and Janusz Korwin-Mikke.
Janusz Korwin-Mikke
Korwin-Mikke is a 68-year-old leader of an “armchair party” called “Liberty and the Rule of Law[1]” who claims himself to be a conservative liberal. In Poland he is known for his absurd maxims like “democracy is stinking crap, it degenerates into ochlocracy as a result of the fact that women, criminals, insane, underage and, perhaps, even gorillas are allowed to vote”. This extravagant Polish bridge champion wears only bow tie and constantly ballots for the President’s post, having constantly gaining less than a 1% of the votes.
Marek Jurek makes a perfect match for him — he’s a 50-year-old leader of “Right of the Republic” movement that features approximately two thousand members. Jurek became famous for his statement that children should be lashed (he said that his own father used to lash him and that it did him only good). Just like Korwin-Mikke he constantly ballots for presidency and just like the former, fails to gain more than 1% of the votes.
Marek Jurek
PiS unquestionably lost the municipal elections that took place on the 21st of September. According to the preliminary data, Kaczyński’s party got the average of 27%. CP won the Sejmiks[2] elections in 13 regions out of 16. PiS won the elections in two voivodeships (Lublin and Subcarpathian) and PSL won at the Świętokrzyskie voivodeship. Prior to the elections Jarosław Kaczyński stated that he will resign if his party loses — however, when the first crushing results were published, he changed his mind. As long as during these elections PiS gained 2% more than it did four years ago, he claimed current PiS result to be a victory. Therefore, Zbigniew Ziobro would have to wait a little more.
However, neither Ziobro, nor his hardly sane chief are going to lie at their oars. In the heat of pre-election campaign main direction of PiS activity shifted to the West. Anna Fotyga (former Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs) and Antoni Macierewicz (former Minister of Interior Affairs) went to the United States in order to complain Americans about their own and Russian governments, that, according to their opinion, have orchestrated the catastrophe of Polish Air Force One near Smolensk. These retired politicians desire Americans to take part in the investigation of a tragic accident and help them to expose Donald Tusk’s and Vladimir Putin’s conspiracy. Quite naturally, no one from the Washington’s administration was willing to meet these lunatics. So all that the Polish petitioners were left to do was to meet with the utmost bellicose Republicans and have some conversations with Polish immigrants at the Polish churches. With a great lament I have to mention that Andrey Illarionov — former Vladimir Putin’s aide, currently living in the USA — promised an active support to these provokers. We may understand and respect any oppositional point of view — if it is dictated by the sincere beliefs of an ex-politician — but this actually smells like an ideological treason of Russian interests.
Unfortunately, aggressive PiS foreign policy finds supporters within the ultra-conservative Western circles. Edward Lucas — European reporter of English “The Economist”, who, by the way, used to head its Moscow branch office — published an article entitled “Hadn’t the Russo-Polish reset gone too far?” in the “Rzerzpospolita” newspaper, which is ideologically close to Kaczyński. Article starts with a statement that invitation of Sergey Lavrov — Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs — to the annual ambassador conference at the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs was a Radosław Sikorski’s mistake. “It is friends, not business partners who are invited to that kind of meetings” — writes Lucas. In an offhand matter, he exceeds the limits of a political analysis, having stated that “Poland became a Russo-German condo, where only money matters and where opposition is ‘marginalized’ or simply murdered”. He dubs Akhmed Zakayev a moderate secular Chechen leader and claims the entire recent activity of Polish government to be a “jittery preparation for Dmitry Medvedev’s visit” that is to take place in December this year. Mr. Lucas is neither satisfied with the agreement for gas supplies between Gazprom and Poland, nor with the Nord Stream gas pipeline construction. He doesn’t appreciate the fact that along with President Kaczyński’s disappearance from the Polish politics, romantic messianism also vanished without a trace, having been replaced with an excessive (due to his opinion) pragmatism. Long story short, PiS efforts were not in vain: they still have the attentive audience and commentators.
Polish political scientists — even those, not belonging to the camp of Kaczyński’s advocates — tend to think that “thanks” to his activity Polish society has been irreversibly polarized and fractured into two almost equal parts. Their reconciliation seems to be almost impossible. Professor Radoslaw Markowski — Head of the Comparative Political Researches Institute within Polish Academy of Sciences — considers the change of Polish state structure from the unitary to a federative one to be the only way out of that situation. He suggests dividing the country along the borders of the election districts, according to the electoral preferences of the population.
Division of Poland according to Markowski
(blue color marks the PiS sphere of influence)
According to him, the division is to go from North to South. At that, Western — more economically prosperous and well-educated voivodeships — are to remain under control of right-liberal Civic Platform and poorer Eastern territories were to fall under the PiS authority.
Politicians that were banished from PiS —headed by Kluzik-Rostkowska — seemingly gained 15 deputies necessary to create a new Seim fraction from those who decided to leave PiS. However, according to a well-known Polish political scientist Sergiusz Kowalski this would just be a second face of the very same insane party. As for Jarosław Kaczyński himself, Kowalski believes him to perfectly combine the features of these two images — Machiavelli-style perfidy and slyness from one hand and the furios insanity from the other one.
History of contemporary Poland shows us that just like the USA, electoral pendulum periodically swings every four years (from one election to another). Never in a modern Polish history a single party managed to win two election campaigns in a row. We’d be extremely unwilling for this rule to stay true in future. Otherwise in the next eleven months we’re about to see Jarosław Kaczyński at the head of the Polish governments once again.
No comments:
Post a Comment