Who is the most popular Polish prime minister – ever?

Asked by Pentor opinion pollsters who they think was, or is, the best prime minister of Poland post-1989, one in three Poles say… Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz!

As he was only in the top job for the nine months between October 2005 to July 2006, it didn’t give him a lot of time to make many mistakes, I suppose. This was during the time when Jaroslaw Kaczynski – the real leader of the government - said that Poles would not accept having twins both in the prime minister’s job and in the presidential palace. And then they got rid of Marcinkiewicz and Poles got just that.

Polish voters didn’t accept Poland run by twins and booted Jaroslaw out at the first opportunity. Only 7 percent think that J. Kaczynski was the best PM since the demise of communism.

Donald Tusk gets a remarkably high 10 percent rating, but I wonder what these people think he has done? Maybe, like Marcinkiewicz, the less you do the more popular you become.

But who is the least popular PM since 1989? Well, it’s a dead heat for last. One is Józef Oleksy. The other is the current deputy PM, Waldemar Pawlak. Both only get a miserable 1.4 percent support.

In Pawlak’s case, this conforms with the beatroot’s rule that a prime minister’s activity and longevity are negatively correlated with popularity. Pawlak - so bereft of personality and verve is he, that even his friends refer to him as the ‘Cyborg’ - has been prime minister not once, but twice.