Polish relief as the Duck Brothers are clobbered by Donald

Below is a re-print from my third entry on the Harvard International Review's blog...

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Poland has not yet perished
So long as we live.
What foreign violence has taken from us,
We will reclaim, sword in hand.

Poland’s history of suffering at the hands of Germany and Russia is so long that its anthem was written at a time when the country had, once again, been partitioned off the map. Despite the loss of statehood, the anthem expresses the hope that, against the odds, “Poland has not yet perished / so long as we live…”

Over the last two years Poland has, once again, suffered immensely. But this time the suffering wasn’t imposed by powerful invaders from the West or East.

No, President Lech Kaczynski and Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski – known, after their looks and surname, as the Duck Brothers – had hijacked Poland via the polls by evoking the worst in its citizens: an hysterical anti-Communist witchhunt which combined McCarthyism with partisan political manipulation; complex-laden, passive-aggressive nationalism which fused racism, anti-Semitism and a paranoid emnity to Germany; an amateurish foreign policy which left key embassies without embassadors; populist opposition to the EU; and economic mismanagement: Jaroslaw Kaczynski didn’t think it a problem that close to half of Poles don’t have bank accounts – indeed, he doesn’t have a bank account himself, preferring to entrust his Prime Ministerial income to his mother.

This time round, Poland’s spooky spectacle was self-imposed.

But at last Sunday’s election, recalling her anthem’s fighting spirit, a different Poland arose to reclaim, pen and polling paper in hand, what domestic violence had taken from her… The result: a resounding defeat of the governing coalition and a victory for the pro-European Civic Platform, led by a calm, intellectual Donald Tusk.

Though the Civic Platform, like the Kaczynkskis’ Law and Justice party, is considered right-of-center on the European political spectrum, its policies are likely to be radically different. As the designated Prime Minister, Tusk is hoping to substitute the traditionalist and protectionist populism of the Kaczynksi years by a modernizing approach: he will push for free-market reforms at the same time as taking a more liberal stance on social issues.

Internationally, the first priority of the new Polish government will be to return Poland to the center of Europe. Under Tusk’s leadership, the Sejm, Poland’s parliament, will move quickly to ratify the EU’s constitutional treaty, which the Duck Brothers had long opposed. This should be welcome news to all Europeans (even though Gordon Brown, who is in his own quandary about how to convince the British to accept the EU treaty, will be unhappy to have the spotlight turn on him…)

Relationships with Germany – which had detiorated to a level of mutual hostility unknown since before Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik reconciled the traditional enemies in the 1970s – will improve markedly, even though real disagreements remain. Poland is worried about a German-Russian oil pipeline which is being built outside Polish territory. It is also angry at the plans, championed by descendents of Poland’s German minority, to commemorate their forefathers’ expulsion after World War II without direct reference to the preceding Nazi terror.

The Polish-German relationship will not turn peachy overnight. But Tusk will know how to raise these issues calmly, as disagreements between friends should be. As a result, Tusk might convince Angela Merkel to take Poland’s genuine worries more seriously than she had when they were raised as a phony part of Kaczynski’s frenzied rhetoric.

The greatest measure of tact, however, will be required in Tusk’s handling of the Polish-American relationship. Tusk and his pro-business party are by no means anti-American – nevertheless, Tusk’s campaign promise to bring back home the remaining 900 Polish soldiers in Iraq will strain Poland’s relationship with the Bush administration. As the “Coalition of the Willing” is further decimated – most of the countries which invaded Iraq at America’s side now make up the “Coalition of Countries whose Previous Governments were Willing” – Donald Tusk will strive hard to assert Poland’s role as an equal partner, neither a vassal nor an enemy, to the US.

Overall, the better Poland has good reasons to be relieved that the Duck Brothers got clobbered by Donald. So has the rest of the world.

Dramatic Crescendo in Polish Battle over Democracy

(Sorry for the 3-day silence - more blog entries to come over the next days, so be sure to check back!)

The Polish Constitutional Court struck down important parts of the so-called “lustration” law Friday, thereby temporarily derailing the government's anti-communist witchhunt, which many consider a danger to democracy. A battle between institutions has ensued, and is likely to determine the political future of the country.

As discussed in this recent blog entry, the law, proposed by the Kaczynski government, would have required Poles to sign a declaration about whether they had any involvement with the Polish secret services during communism. Failure to comply, or past collaboration with communism, would have been punished by suspension from work for ten years. The forms, now obsolete, had already been sent out and were due back by May 16th.

The government had made it amply evident that it fully intended actually to remove anyone who did not return the questionnaire in time from their work. This would have included revoking the mandate of MEP Bronislaw Geremek, an opponent of the Kaczynski government who had been a famous dissident during communism.

Frustrated in their scheme by the Constitutional Court's ruling, the government immediately tried to question the court's legitimacy in a full-blown smear campaign against its judges – demonstrating just why its unhealthy obsession with the past could spell real trouble for Polish democracy.

Even before the verdict was officially announced, Arkadiusz Mularczyk, who initiated the “lustration law”, accused two judges of having worked for the Communist secret service. The allegations have since turned out to be ill-founded, but not before the court had excluded the judges from deliberation on the case.

The reputation of the judges has survived intact, but the government thereby demonstrated its readiness and ability to use privileged access to state archives for partisan political advantage. Worse, it has reinforced fears that the “lustration law” functions more as a declaration of allegiance to the Kaczynski twins than a serious attempt to gather information about past wrongs.

The fierce broadsides the government fired against the Constitutional Court over the last 48 hours have also raised fears that it might not respect the judges' institutional prerogative to ascertain whether laws are in conformity with the constitution. Comments by both Prime Minister Jaroslaw and President Lech Kaczynski, who insisted that "we're not through with this case yet", were seen as an indication that a power struggle between executive and judiciary may be fast approaching.

If the executive prevails, Poland's first democratic constitution since World War II might soon have as little to do with reality as Socialist declarations of human rights.

The stand-off between the ideological follies of the Kaczynski government and democratic forces such as the judiciary has undergone a tense crescendo over the last forty-eight hours. In the best case scanario, the Constitutional Court has reigned in an ailing government, helping Polish democracy to survive until more moderate forces are elected. In the worst case scenario, the wrath it now faces will make Poland's judiciary – and, along with it, political liberty – obsolete.

Poland Plays with Fire

In politics all is rarely well when the most heated debates erupt over symbolic acts, not policies. When disagreements about flags, declarations and history are in the news, tempestuous times often lie ahead.

How quickly a symbolic act, carried out in the full conviction of acting rightly, can turn into rioting and international tensions was demonstrated by the Estonian authorities a few days ago. Chaos and unnecessary misery ensued when Estonia announced its intention to remove memorials to Soviet soliders who had freed the country from Nazi rule during World War II. Any sober mind that followed this sorry spectacle might have concluded that, at least when they are hardly about to wake up and bite you, it is better to let sleeping dogs lie.

The Polish government, however – in any case not particularly renowned for its soberness – seems to have drawn the opposite conclusion. Engaged in what has justly been described as a “witch hunt” against intellectuals who have co-operated – or, as likely, been forced into pretending to co-operate – with Communist authorities, it took the events in Estonia as inspiration to take its unhealthy obsessions another step further. As a result, the catalogue of unsavoury and dangerous measures against ideologically "suspect" Poles is growing day by day.

The Kaczynski twins, respectively President and Prime Minister of Poland, have for some time been orchestrating a “lustration law”, according to which all state employees (including university professors) and figures of public life (including journalists) have to sign a declaration about whether they had any involvement with the Polish secret services during communism. In case they refuse to fill out the government questionnaire, or are judged to have lied, they will be suspended from their work for 10 years.

The eminent British historian Norman Davies has rightly called this a “threat to freedom”. Not, however, because a serious investigation of crimes committed during communism is unnecessary; but rather because under a surveillance system akin to that depicted in The Lives of Others countless people were pressurised into signing declarations that they would co-operate with secret services, yet never passed on any information. Superficial glimpses into secret service archives are therefore bad guides to historical guilt. What is worse, the de facto declaration of allegiance demanded by the “lustration law” replicates Communist rituals of ideological cleansing – and runs the danger of being used primarily as a partisan weapon against political opponents.

In the last days the Polish government has taken further, equally worrying, steps, which demonstrate that in its fanatical fight against all things communist it will not leave untouched even the battle against fascism. First, it tentativley followed the Estonian example by loudly considering to authorise local government agencies to remove monuments to Soviet World War II soldiers. Now, it is removing veteran status from Poles who had fought against fascism on the Republican side in the Spanish civil war.

A great majority of those unjustly dishonoured by this symbolic step have died long since – only five Polish veterans from the Spanish Civil War are still alive.

A declaration signed by important intellectuals in Poland and abroad, and published in the country's most important daily, the Gazeta Wyborcza, has called upon the government to reconsider its policies. “We appeal to public opinion throughout the democratic world: don't turn your eyes away from what is happening in Poland. For the sake of your, and our, freedom”.

Indeed world, and especially European, opinion will have to decide how to confront the Polish government's actions. Whilst the European Union appears unwilling to meddle with the way its member states deal with their past, it cannot turn a blind eye to the ideological prosecution of individuals unfolding within its territory.

Neither can the EU remain silent about other policies activley pursued by the Kaczynski brothers, such as legislative projects which clearly discriminate against homosexuals. According to a law currently under consideration by the governing coalition, for example, school teachers could be dismissed if they publicly admitted to their homosexuality.

If the EU is to be a society defined by shared values, rather than merely a common market, it will have to find effective means to stop these ideas from becoming law. If public opinion in other European countries fails to rise to this challenge, the Polish government's pyromaniac penchant for symbolic politics could burn down a piece of the European project as well as political freedom within Poland itself.

The authors of the recent declaration are right. All of us must engage with current events in Poland to safeguard liberty – and to protect the credibility of the European project.