PiS up

The Law and Justice party convention turned into a victory rally. Not much else, really.

Re-elected leader of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS), Jaroslaw Kaczynskia told the party faithful at the weekend that the government aims to broaden the coalition with the addition of ‘intellectuals’ and promises an all-out attack on the morally corrupt post-communist ‘system’. But he has said all that before – many times.

Jaroslaw, in an ‘impassioned speech’ (meaning, a bit of a rant) let us in on what to expect from the government in the next few weeks and months.

‘We must build a coalition of all those who are guided by common sense[?] and adopt a rational view of Polish realities. It must be a coalition of those who refuse to believe that what is white is in fact black and vice versa, and who don’t dismiss talk of a network of vested interests that mars Poland’s public life’.

ER...right. Black is indeed not white – it’s common sense, innit?

By ‘vested interests’ he is referring to what PiS and other members of the coalition government see as a post-communist network of ex-communists and liberal allies in business, civil service, media and secret services. These people, who got their hands on the post-communist bounty, have, thinks PiS, led to a corrupt and ‘morally sick’ society.

Kaczynski also signaled that he wants to broaden the coalition of PiS, far-right nationalist League of Polish Families and rural, populist, ex-stalinist Self defense by trying to tempt more ‘intellectuals’ and middle class types into a government that many think is chronically short of experience and...well, intelligence.

But how to do that when you have people like Andrzej Lepper and Roman Giertych as vice-prime ministers?

Sociologist Jacek Kucharczyk told Radio Polonia:

‘I didn’t see any specific offer [at the party convention] except for ‘come with us, if you join us you will get a job in the administration because we need people to fill up all the numerous positions of authority within the government.

There was no offer to doctors [who have been staging protests for weeks now over pay], for instance, or other segments of intelligentsia […] So I think this offer is not credible, especially in view of the presence of people like Andrzej Lepper in the government who made his anti-intelligentsia rhetoric part and parcel of his political career.'

Jaroslaw Kaczynski – whose opinion poll ratings have plummeted recently – remains popular with his party. He was re-elected chairman of the party almost unanimously by the 11,000-delegated votes with only 19 against.