POLISH CHOICE 2011

Donald Tusk will hardly be able to rule for more years without scandals and shocks. He has managed to go through the previous cadenza at a record-breaking peaceful pace, having losing almost none of the essential Ministers of his Cabinet. That’s why having coped with the euphoria of the triumph he’s ponder over how to live the next four years and don’t make the Poles tired from seeing the same faces in the government and the Seim.

Kaczyński' casus.

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.

Kaczyński' casus. Part 7

Forecast for tomorrow

     

Changes in the Polish politics that took place during last six months are too great to forecast the future from the scratch even for me, although I have been watching after the polititical situation in Poland for years. In order to project the political development of the country I need to analyze the realignment of the Polish political forces once again, estimate their prospects and attempt to figure out what may come out from their competition. 

Kaczyński' casus. Part VI

The first blood was drawn today. What’s next?

On the 19^th of October Polish civil war stopped being a cold one. The first blood was drawn. 62-year-old taxi driver Ryszard Z. (Polish legislation prohibits publishing criminals’ last names before the court ruling to become effective) broke into the PiS office in Łódź, having shot one of the employees and heavily wounded the second one with a knife. This has never happened in the contemporary Polish history before. First political murder in the post-communist Poland has blown up already electrified Polish society. Most part of Poles has treated this incident in a rather adequate manner.  Every sane person understood even clearer that the PiS-inspired policy of hatred eventually hit those who were imposing it on the country.

Kaczyński' casus

Part V

Poland: yesterday, today, tomorrow.

      

Secret of today’s face-off among the Polish elite lies in the whole of yesterday.

Things that happen in today’s Poland were seemingly impossible to imagine merely a years or two ago. How could have cozy, comfortable and quiet country turned into a battlefield and become an arena for the cold civil war, gradually mutating into a real one? In order to answer these questions we would have to go few decades back in the past.

Kaczyński' casus

Part IV

 

Who are you, pan Kaczyński?

 

                                 

           That’s how brothers looked like in 1962 (scene from the “The Two Who Stole The Moon[1]” motion picture) and 

how they look 45 years after that

 

 

Jarosław Kaczyński, having stepped over the borders of not only Polish but the European political culture as well, created a new model of political behavior, based not on the politically correct depersonalized attitude to the political struggle — as it is common for the countries with firm democratic traditions — but rather on a passionate, deeply personal attitude to the politics (frankly speaking, a lot more characteristic of the Latin America[2] rather than Europe). In order to understand the incentives and algorithms — according to which Kaczyński acts — we have to have a closer look at his person. That is the only way to understand the transformation of a Democrat, fighting against totalitarian communist regime, into the furious populist, fiercely defying the very same democratic values he once used to fight for.

Kaczyński' casus

Kaczyński' casus

Part III

Christian Knights

      

Fuss around Palikot’s party and the first “piping hot” public opinion polls have indicated 2-3 percents of public support for the rowdy politician right on the day of constituent convention. He became personal enemy of Kaczyński (mind that he seized these modest percents from PiS electorate, gradually depriving Catholic fundamentalists of the moderate voters’ support) and made PiS chairman to strike back.