Post 100

The beatroot is six months and one hundred posts old. I never knew it would be so much fun!

Got an email from expatanchor.net. Apparently the beatroot has been judged as ‘most influential expat blog in Central Europe’ – whatever that means! It was good to see, as well, that two other blogs – Kinuk in Poland and Warsaw Station - got in the top ten as well. I don’t really understand how they have come to this conclusion, but I am not complaining.

Sorry this post is a bit self-indulgent but, what the hell, it’s my blog!

I started the beatroot originally to put things that I had written elsewhere in one place – like a portfolio, or something. But then I soon discovered that there was much, much more to blogging than that!

Since then I have met so many people via other blogs, have learnt loads, and found out which of my arguments are good and which ones are just completely stupid.

Blogging is not like journalism. I have no editor, sub-editor (although many people say that I need one!) advertisers (blogs should not have advertisers!), board of directors, etc. That’s the strength of blogs – they are independent. The weakness of blogging is that there is no editor, sub-editor (although many people say that I need one!) advertisers (blogs should not have advertisers!), board of directors, etc. It means that blogs have none of the usual filters that journalism has.

So the only checks and balances that we bloggers have is through the comments we get from our readers. And I want to thank the many people who pop in to tell me about the things that I have written and express their opinions. I love it when the comments are more interesting than the original post – which is quite often. As far as I can understand one of the criteria for ‘most influencial expat blog’ is the quality of the comments. And I have been lucky to have some real battles going on(see comment section on last post for a good example of this). Two contributors stand out – Michael Farris and Stefanmichnik, who have had some very entertaining battles over the last couple of months, or so.

On the beatroot’s one hundred posts birthday, can I also thank (this is turning into an Oscar type speech – sorry!) all the other blogs who have said nice things about the blog, including EU Referendum blog, Brussels Journal, By Dawn’s Early Light, European Democracy, Around the World in Eighty Days, Bicyclemark.org (who I talked to yesterday on his excellent podcasting blog from Amsterdam) and many more that, to be honest, I can’t remember right now.

So, thanks again and I hope the next 100 posts are as much fun and education for me as the first lot have been.

Peace!

PS. Please visit our collective blog – P3 - that we have set up here in Warsaw. It brings together several individual bloggers under one name and place. Our next p3 meeting is this Saturday, I believe.

Poland needs a new PR agent

‘Queer bashing, CIA torturing, Star Wars II anti-ballistic missile hosting American poodles’. Is Poland becoming a European pariah?

It’s not been a good couple of months for the image of Poland abroad.

The EU thinks that the new Polish parliament is a nest of Eurosceptics; headlines in the international newspapers scream at the injustice of gays denied the right to demonstrate, and get beaten up when they do - and British MEP, Sarah Ludford has called on Brussels to take legal action against the government; human rights campaigners suspect Poland is hosting secret CIA torture camps; and western Europeans fret that Poland might welcome, in the near future, American, Son of Star Wars, anti-ballistic missile systems on its soil.

The government has been warned by the EU that it has signed documents guaranteeing rights to sexual minorities; the Council of Europe is investigating the possibility of CIA camps and has warned that, if true, then Poland would be in breach of numerous international agreements and could face serious sanctions from Brussels.

But is Poland as bad as it’s being portrayed by some foreign journalists?

Europe’s homophobes?

The charge of homophobia is certainly justified. Many here hold social attitudes more applicable to Warsaw in 1935 than 2005. For four decades communism stopped Poland’s development dead in its tracks. When the regime crumbled the nation’s economy, social structure and culture were stuck in the past. A can of worms opened and out spilled some antiquated and distasteful social attitudes.

A religious based homophobia is one of them. This is being expressed by the new PiS government, which reflects the backwardness of maybe 1 in 2 of the population who feel that freedoms of speech should only be for people ‘like us’ and not for people ‘like them’.

And that’s a very ‘1930s’ type of attitude.

Anti-ballistic missile base?

Still living in the 1930s, many Poles feel that Russia is the threat and that a defense shield should be put up to guard Poland from eastern threats.

“We will analyze everything thoroughly and at the appropriate moment say whether it is good or not for Poland,” PM Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz has said, admitting that talks about a US antimissile system have been going on with the Pentagon for years. He has promised that, before any final decision is reached, a thorough public debate will take place first.

But Poland is not alone in looking at this system. The Czech Republic and Hungary are also looking at the plans, and the UK has long supported the general idea of a system being set up in Europe.

CIA gulags?

I have argued on the beatroot before that the often hysterical claims about these camps do not match the evidence. Just because we know that planes used by the CIA for transporting terror suspects landed in Poland does not prove anything at all, apart from the fact that the planes have been using a northern Polish airstrip to land on.

We now know that the CIA has been using many countries to do this in, including Denmark, Spain, Holland, Italy, the UK…. But nobody has suggested, like one Turkish writer has done, that the UK or Holland are sites of a ‘US Auschwitz’.

I wonder why? Perhaps these writers are being informed by some 1930s prejudices of their own – if Poland and other Central European countries had a death camps on their soil once, could they have them now?

Last Friday, Dick Marty, the Swiss senator heading the investigation on behalf of the Council of Europe, said that the prospect of large clandestine torture camps in Central Europe was ‘highly unlikely’, though he did think that is possible that ”there were detainees that stayed 10, 15 or 30 days. We do not have the full picture." The Council of Europe is currently trying to get hold of satellite images of the airbases in Poland and Romania.

Eurocepticism?

There is no doubt that many politicians affect an anti-European stance in much of their rhetoric. Again this reflects an almost pre-war distrust of Western Europe and an inability to deal the world as it is today. Two parties currently propping up the minority government in parliament – Self defense and League of Polish Families have indicated that they would like to re-negotiate Poland’s terms of entry into the Union.

But Poles in general are not as Eurosceptic as are many in northern Europe – particularly in the UK and Denmark. And the Polish government has said that the EU is essential for the economic development of the country. The torturous negotiations over the EU budget shows that it is not Poland who is holding up a resolution to the problem, but rather richer countries like the UK that want to reduce their contributions. Poland, on the other hand, wants to get its hands on those contributions in the form of subsidies and joint investment projects.

So though of the criticism of Poland recently rightly points out a backwardness of much of the population to issues that were settled in the nineteen sixties in the western Europe, a lot of that criticism is also based on a misunderstanding of the facts, a love of conspiracy theories, an ignorance of Central Europe, and lazy journalism.

But I still think that Poland needs a better PR manager, because the current Polish government is not doing a very good job at all – in fact, it’s very much part of the problem.

Gay activists in Warsaw protest Polish homophobia

Over 1000 gather peacfully at Plac Konstitucji, in the centre of the Polish capital, surrounded by several hundred police.

Under gloomy skies and in light rain the demonstrators listened to speeches and music booming out of sound systems, as the rest of Warsaw did their Sunday shopping. The action came in response to violence from police and rightwing thugs in Poznan last weekend, when several protestors from the Campaign Against Homophobia were beaten and arrested.

Left wing members of parliament from the SLD, SdLP, Greens and the Democratic Party gave suppport to the protest.

An expected counter-demonstration from far-right politicians and hooligans did not happen - except for a small press conference from the League of Polish Families in the square. A handful of skinheads hung around the four corners of Plac Konstitucji, making calls on their mobiles (I was suprised that they seemed to know how to work them!) trying to get more of their little buddies to come along.

The demonstration is part of a nationwide action this weekend involving six Polish cities, including Gdansk, where the local chapter of the Solidarity trade union gave its support.

Hypocrites

Update!!!… Demonstrations organised by the Campaign Against Homophobia in Poland will take place this weekend in Elblag, Gdansk, Torun, Lodz, Warsaw, Rzeszow, Wroclaw, Katowice and Krakow…The demo in Warsaw will start on Sunday at 12.00p.m. at Plac Konstitucji…. If you care about human rights in Poland then BE THERE……


Two Polish newspapers, Wednesday, had parts of their front pages blacked out with ink in support of freedom of speech in Belarus. Video footage, however, shows that human rights problems can be found closer to home.

Under the headline ‘This is what freedom of speech looks like in Belarus’ Gazeta Wyborcza and Rzeczpospolita inked out sections of articles on their front pages in support of an Amnesty International campaign against human rights abuses in Belarus.

And jolly good, too.

Shame then that the Polish newspapers don’t pay as much attention to human rights abuses going on in their own country.

To the usual deafening silence, gays and lesbians and human rights campaigners were denied the right once again to protest against officially sanctioned homophobia in Poland. Last Saturday, protesters in Poznan – who went ahead with an Equality March even though the local council had denied them permission to do so – were beaten and arrested by cops and intimidated by local right wing thugs.

See how the Polish authorities respect human rights in this video.

And where is the blacked out front pages about that one then?

Last night, Marian Pilka (Marian is a male name in Poland), an MP from the ruling Law and Justice party, called for gays to have psychiatric treatment and to ban the 'promotion' of homosexuality.

And word is getting around. On his first trip to London since becoming PM, Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz had to use a side entrance when visiting Tony Blair at 10 Downing Street so as to avoid protests from activists.

It's easy for Polish newspapers to look good and radical when you are up against someone like Belarus' President, Alexander Lukashenko. It's not even a very controversial move to have a go at old baldy, now is it? I'm sure even Gazeta's advertisers didn't mind that much.

Might it not be a great idea, though, for Polish newspapers to take a look at somewhere a little closer to home, perhaps?

Now that really would be radical.

Rainbow warriors

The liberal-minded environmentalist Greenpeace, and the socially conservative Law and Justice government are united in their campaign against ‘Frankenstein food’.

The Baltic port of Gdynia had never seen anything like it. Last Thursday, activists from Greenpeace, the direct action environmental campaigners, tied themselves and their yellow rubber dingy to the anchor of a ship, preventing it from docking. The ship, the Hope, which began its journey in Argentina, was full up with 25,000 tons of animal feed made from Genetically Modified soya beans.

In Argentina, say Green activists, GM soya is causing massive environmental problems, such as deforestation, dramatic increase in the spraying of toxic herbicides and infertility of the soil.

Greenpeace say that Poland – where the majority of soya beans imported are used for animal feed - is rapidly becoming a ‘gateway’ through which GM crops are ‘sneaking into Europe’. Polish meat producers – which Greenpeace ominously remind us are ‘mostly in the hands of foreign owners’ - feed GM products to animals, which are them exported to countries such as Belgium, Germany, Sweden, UK, The Netherlands, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania. Greenpeace says that ‘GM derived meat and other products bare a completely unqualified health risk for consumers.’

I should warn that the ‘unqualified health risk’ in that sentence is another way of saying that there has been no proven health risk to humans from GM crops – but that’s another argument.

Meanwhile, back at the port in Gdynia, Greenpeace had picked a bad day for attaching themselves to a large ship’s anchor. The Baltic Sea is an unforgiving one. At this time of year it is absolutely freezing. After five hours of dangling from the anchor, buffeted by high winds in low temperatures, Greenpeace called it a day, and the cargo, imported by the US firm Cargill (I told you those nasty foreign firms were involved), finally made dry land.

Following directives from the European Union, growing GM crops in Poland is now illegal. But importing GM crops is legal. Greenpeace want to ban it all.

Bad news for greens

Though Greenpeace opened an office here a few years ago, the green movement is not a large one in Poland. People are not so much interested in sustainable development, they just want some sort of development.

Many in the West have decided that that their level of consumption is bad, and that emerging economies should not reach the same amount of consumption, and wealth, as they have. They must develop in a ‘sustainable’ way. And that means slowing down development. They are expecting people in Poland, naively, to slow down the rate at which their incomes grow.

I don’t think I need to point out why this is not going to be a very popular political option.

And now the good news…

There is some good news for the green movement in Poland. Central and eastern Europe is beginning to freak out about GM. Around 76 per cent of Polish consumers say they don't want to eat any food containing GM ingredients, according, that is, to a PBS opinion poll commissioned by Greenpeace Polska.

This follows an earlier study that says that 95 per cent of Russians who are aware of GM ingredients are either opposed, or are ‘seriously concerned’ by them.

And there is more good news for Polish greens. The new, populist, socially conservative, Law and Justice (PiS) government has come out squarely against genetically modified organisms getting in the food chain and messing up the wildlife.

This government position comes from two sources: one is that the EU is putting pressure on governments to fall into line with its anti-GM, precautionary stance. The other is what I would call the ‘Prince Charles’ position - that doing research into genetics, nanotechnology etc, is ‘scientists playing God’.

And the religious in the Polish government, and its allies in parliament, agree with the red faced, jug-eared, unemployed Royal about that kind of thing.

So the new, socially conservative government in Poland, and the ‘radical’, ‘liberal’ green campaigners of Greanpeace, have something in common: they are both against Genetically Modified Crops.

Another unlikely alliance in this wacky 21st century, Post-Cold War world.

Catholic Poland

A survey conducted by the Polish church shows that the majority of Poles are not ‘religiously active’.

Working as a journalist in Poland forces you to write sentences that include phrases such as ‘in staunchly Catholic Poland…’, or, ‘the devoutly Catholic Polish…’, or, ‘In a country where 95% are Catholic…’, etc. And every time I write these words (editors like it when you do, for some reason) I know that I am misleading the reader. Yes, 95% of people identify themselves as Roman Catholics. But that does not mean Poland is overflowing with the god-fearing.

A survey just released confirms this. Only 43% of Poles claim to be ‘actively religious’, or practicing Catholics. The majority of Poles only go to church on religious holidays, or for births, weddings and deaths. Some never go near the place at all.

This tallies with opinion polls that say that 50% of Poles want their very strict abortion laws liberalized. Seventy-five percent do not believe in the Catholic explanation of what happens after death. And, remarkably for a country where ‘natural methods of contraception’ (otherwise know a ‘cross your fingers and hope for the best’) are taught by the priests, Poland has one of the lowest birthrates in the world.

So the next time you see an article with ‘In a country where 95% are Catholic’ in it, make sure you put inverted commas over the catholic bit.

Is it a bird, is it a plane...?

...no, it’s Andrzej Lepper, Super-capitalist!

Yes, you thought that Lepper, leader of the populist, left wing farmer’s union and lawmaker, was the former communist party political bruiser, the farm owner down on his luck, who came to fame as the organizer of road blocks in rural areas in the fight to defend the Polish farmer from market reforms, Brussels, and towns and cities in general with populations of over six hundred and fifty.

You thought his foreign policy included a sympathetic ear to the trials and tribulations of the Belarus’ president, Alexander Lukashenko.

You thought his economic plan included halting privatization, and the state keeping hold of all major industries.

You thought that Andrzej Lepper was an unreconstructed, Soviet-type socialist with a dollop of nationalism thrown in.

But just as Clarke Kent slipped off his suit and tie in a phone booth to reveal the caped crusader beneath, so Lepper has thrown away the muddy boots and straw in the top pocket, to reveal a tasty pinstripe suit.

Andrzej Lepper has declared himself a capitalist!

“A socialist party has no chance today,” he says, with the dazed look of a Damascus experience still lingering in his eyes. He’s in favor of the privatization of everything but essential industries. He’s a modern guy! Honest!

But what led Lepper to this flash of market orientated inspiration? What took Leper out of the pig shed with shovel and into the office and executive toys?

Naked ambition? Quite probably. He knows that the minority PiS government can’t rule without him and his Samoobrona (Self defense) party. He wants a formal coalition with PiS, and a place in the government.

But he’s not just decided he’s a capitalist. He also says that he is now a ‘social-liberal’.

Oxymoron? Yes, but a typically Polish, political oxymoron. The liberal bit means he ‘believes’ in the market. The social bit means that the state is not going to be cutting social services, welfare, and social spending in general. And the farmers are still going to get price stability and lots of subsidies.

A tactical metamorphoses. But the change is less like a Clarke Kent to a Superman, as a tadpole into a frog.

Poles ban gay parade, EU bans anti-abortion exhibit

Polish reactionaries and EU liberals have more in common than they think.

It’s becoming a bit of a habit. Local authorities in Poland, this time in the mid-west city of Poznan, have banned a Gay Pride march, scheduled to take place this Saturday. The reason the local council give for denying people the right to free assembly and expression is that the march would be a, ‘serious danger to social order and property.’

A similar excuse was given by the then mayor of Warsaw, and now president of Poland, Lech Kaczynski, when he banned (for the second year running) a similar parade through the centre of the capital this summer.

Of course, if you asked these politicians what the real reason is for such authoritarian behaviour they would tell you that they just find homosexuality offensive and ungodly, and don’t want to see such a parade in their city.

Polish human rights campaigners have argued that banning gay pride marches goes against the Polish Constitution. The European Union has warned President Kaczynski that he is going against human rights agreements signed by Poland.

Meanwhile, down at the EU parliament…

An anti-abortion exhibition entitled Life and Children in Europe ended in fisty-cuffs yesterday. Sponsored by MEPs from the League of Polish Families (LPR), the exhibition showed photos of unborn foetuses, and children in WWII concentration camps.

Enraged by the connection between terminations and Nazis, liberals and social democrats in the parliament, where the exhibition was being displayed, tried to take down the photographs. Security guards intervened when LPR members tried to keep the photos just where they were, and a fight broke out.

But the liberals succeeded in getting the offending material taken down.

Leader of LPR in the EU parliament, Maciej Giertych, said that he “never thought that the exhibit would be censored. I thought parliament was the place where controversial opinions were expressed.”

And, of course, he’s right. Just because someone doesn’t like opinions being expressed, or finds them offensive – like I do - is no reason to ban those opinions.

And that includes the actions of bigots in the local council in Poznan. Just because they find homosexuality offensive is no reason to ban a Gay Pride march.

Both the League of Polish Families and the liberals in Strasburg seem to agree that freedom of speech and expression is only permissible if that speech is not offensive to anybody.

But freedom of speech is not divisible. Both gays and anti-abortion activists have the right to press their case. And if people don’t like that case then they should be free to oppose it. Unfortunately, that kind of thinking is becoming increasingly unfashionable, both on the left and the right of the political spectrum.

If I was the security guard at the EU parliament I would have left the MEPs to it. These days, bigots and 'liberals' deserve each other.

It’s not been a good week for European liberty.

Still a hard sell?

The Polish defense minister, Radek Sikorski, and Star Wars II

The Warsaw Station blog comments on official recognition that Warsaw and Washington have been negotiating a deal on placing the US ‘Star Wars II’, anti-ballistic missile system in this country. Gustav notes that:

Gazeta [Wyborcza] reports that Dominique Moisi from the French Institute of International studies, says: "Did Poland consult its decision with European allies? Poland sees itself in the EU as a bridge between NATO and Europe. Together with this new government the question arises: Hasn't she already gone to the other side of the bridge?"

The US is building two bases at home where anti-rocket rockets and radar systems will be searching the skies for incoming threats from the latest bogey-state of the day. The Pentagon has been searching for a third base, in central and Eastern Europe, since late 2003. Candidates include Poland, Czech Republic or Hungary.

If Poland is chosen, then the man on the Polish side responsible for dealing with the Pentagon is the new Defense Minister, Radek Sikorski. If this is the new government’s policy then Sikorski must presumably be for the policy too.

Well, late last year he was more skeptical. In December 2004, Emmanuel Evita writes at the American Enterprise Institute web site:

Sikorski said granting interceptor host rights to the United States amounts to "ceding territory (for one country) to launch violence against another country to affect its strategic calculus." Anything less than a generous package -- which could include greater industrial and economic incentives according to Sikorski -- would be "a difficult sell in the current atmosphere of Central Europe" -- including Poland, said Sikorski. "There is a growing feeling in the region that 'We are not doing Iraq again.'"

So what’s happened since a year ago? Has the situation in Iraq got any better? Or is the 'package' getting better?

A United States’ Auschwitz?

Speculation about CIA gulags in Poland reaches new heights of absurdity …and I get quoted in the Washington Post!

Imagine my surprise when reading an article in the Post – the newspaper that originally broke the allegations - on reactions to the story in central and Eastern Europe, to see extracts from something I wrote for the radio. Washington Post journalist Jefferson Morley writes:

In Poland, Peter Gentle of Radio Polonia said the Post story came "as a bit of a shock to Poles. Most – maybe all – people I have spoke to just can’t believe a word of it. A Guantanamo Bay type prison in the middle of northern Poland? Don’t be ridiculous. "

Gentle described the evidence to support the claim of a prison in Poland as "dodgy, to say the least," adding that Poles "won’t believe that there are any [secret prisons] in Poland until physical evidence of these camps is uncovered before their very eyes."

The headline on his column evoked incredulity: "CIA Gulags--in Poland?"

Blimey!

Poles’ reaction is indeed one of disbelief, and some feel insulted that, on the back of circumstantial evidence, Poland is being accused of not just hosting secret camps, but of trying to cover up their existence.

But this hasn’t stopped the speculation in the media. Again from the Jefferson Morley article in the Post:

In Turkey, a columnist for the Yeni Safak newspaper said, "human smuggling sponsored by governments is gradually becoming a nightmare for the entire world... Are we going to cover up operations, unlawful acts, and crimes against humanity committed by the CIA or on its behalf in this country?" Ibrahim Karagul predicted the "secret torture centres" in Eastern Europe will be recorded in history as "the United States' Auschwitzs."

The Turkish writer goes on to say that he, ‘has no doubt the largest of these camps is in Poland’.

A ‘United States’ Auschwitz’ in Poland? This is an amazing claim to make, and I really think the guy who wrote that is a fool. Quite apart from the nauseating way that people, these days, over use words associated with the holocaust – and in doing so take away the unique horror of what happened during WWII – does he really think that another Auschwitz in Poland could be kept a secret? Does he know what the original Auschwitz was like?

In search of a smoking gun...

The evidence for a camp in Poland is based on one fact, and lots of ‘unnamed sources’.

A plane, en route from Guantanamo Bay to Afghanistan and back again, touched down in Szymany airstrip, northern Poland. We know this from the flight logs of a 737 Boeing thought to be one of a fleet of planes used by the CIA the purpose of moving around terror suspects.

An eyewitness – the ex-director of the airport - has said that, on September 22, 2003, she saw five men get on the plane, traveling on US passports. She also said, however, that nobody got off the plane, which was on the runway for about an hour.

We also have a TIME magazine article this week claiming that ‘counter intelligence sources’ had conformed the existence of the camps in central and Eastern Europe.

Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at the National Security Archive, a public-interest documentation center in Washington, told Democracy Now:

I think the bottom line is that the C.I.A. fears that if the names of these countries are published, the people in those countries, Eastern Europeans who have, you know, pushed away from the gulags of the past and are trying to rebuild democracies in the present, will say: ‘Hey, this is not what we want in our countries!’ And this is exactly what happened with the C.I.A. detention center in Thailand. When it was revealed the C.I.A. was running a secret center in the war on terrorism in Thailand, the Thai government said: ‘We want to be able to deny that we have such a detention center here, and you have to shut it down.’ That is what the C.I.A. is truly worried about, is losing its ability to sustain these facilities.

These claims are also backed up by the TIME article I referred to earlier.

Maybe the best bit of evidence comes from the Washington Post itself, which says that it knows which countries are involved, but has agreed with the US government not to reveal them. The media watchdog, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, has complained that this ‘self censorship’ is dangerous for press freedom in the States. "The possibility that illegal, unpopular government actions might be disrupted is not a consequence to be feared, however-it's the whole point of the First Amendment,” it says.

While it is certain that there are secret camps being used around world for keeping al.-Qaeda suspects, the evidence that they are here in Poland is circumstantial, and certainly not good enough to claim that there are modern day equivalents to Auschwitz.

In the meantime, me, the girlfriend and the dog will not be opening the door to dodgy looking Americans who say that they are ‘from Washington’.

Forward to ‘Polish capitalism’

The vote of confidence in parliament Thursday means that Poland finally has a government. But for how long?

It was no surprise, really. Two hundred and seventy two deputies voted for the Law and Justice (PiS) led government – including lawmakers from League of Polish Families and SelfDefence, and 187 voted against, including ex-communists SLD and the largest opposition party, the free market Civic Platform.

This gives the government, headed by PM Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, the go ahead for their slightly vague program. Details include; trying to forge closer links between the US and the EU; no privatizations of key state industries such as the postal service, public television and radio, banking and energy; a simplified (but not flat) tax system, the end of capital gains tax on stock market earnings, and a 30 billion zloty (8.75 billion dollars) ceiling on the budget deficit.

But what to call this new arrangment?

"We are going to develop these companies to create a Polish brand name and Polish capitalism," Marcinkiewicz said after the vote last night.

Polish capitalism? Throw in some of PiS’s more socially authoritarian policies and what you get is a Polish conservative-socialism!

PiS are presenting all this as a pragmatic agenda and not an ‘ideological’ one. This is wise as it gives them more room to change their program as external political realities dictate.

The support achieved by PiS in parliament in the vote of confidence from smaller, more extreme populist parties is provisional. Roman Giertych, head of the far-right League of Polish Families gave PiS a warning that they could not expect his party to just vote for everything that comes their way: "We won't give this government another chance if it departs from what has been announced in the policy statement," he said.

In an attempt to stabilize the situation, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, head of the parliamentary wing of PiS, said yesterday that he did not rule out a more formal arrangement for a coalition government with the farmers union, SelfDefence.

Brussels to the rescue?

Should the EU ‘save’ Poles from their ‘radical’ government?

The outgoing president, ex-communist Aleksander Kwasniewski, told a British newspaper this week that the ‘EU and NATO’ will limit the more extreme tendencies of the new minority, populist, social conservative Law and Justice (PiS) administration.

The comment comes before a constitutional vote of confidence which PiS must pass in the Sejm (parliament) this Thursday if they are to remain in government.

To get through the vote PiS must find support from parties such as the League of Polish Families (policies of which include making still more strict Poland’s already strict abortion ban, even when rape is the cause of the pregnancy) and the SelfDefense farmers union (the leader of which gives his support to Belarus’ president, Alexander Lukashenko).

Since the general election last September, Law and Justice have been making policy noises that will certainly disturb many a Eurocrat in Brussels.

Finance Minister, Lubinska, has said that she thinks that foreign hypermarkets are not a positive investment in Poland and that smaller, indigenous retail units should be given more support (see below). The top layer of the secret services has been given the sack. The police force is being radically reorganized and up to 50% more police will be recruited and put on the streets to combat crime. Economic policies appear to fail to tackle Poland’s ballooning budget deficit. And PiS – long hot under the collar (and sweaty of palm) about homosexuality, have indicated they are considering legislation to ban gays from the teaching profession.

All radical, or reactionary, stuff. But should President Kwasniewski be calling for the EU to save Poles from PiS and their rather strange friends?

After all, nobody is claiming that PiS won the election unfairly. There were no ‘hanging chads’ clogging up the ballot boxes.

At a time when many educated Poles throw up their hands in horror at the dismal level of turnout in Polish elections (if 50% drag themselves out to vote then it’s considered quite a success in Poland – see my Silent Majority) then should we be hoping for the un-elected in Brussels to save Poles from themselves?

Many will find some of the policies of the present government repugnant, but hoping for bureaucrats somewhere outside the country to do something about it will only increase Poles disengagement from the ballot box, democracy and politics in general.

As has been said many times elsewhere, in a democracy, the people get the government they deserve. If Poles don’t like PiS then they can get rid of them next polling day.

If you go down to Tesco’s today…

...you won’t be seeing the new Polish Finance Minister by the cheese counter.

It’s official: Teresa Lubinska, the recently appointed FM in the new Polish minority government, does not shop at Tesco’s, or any other foreign owned supermarket. She thinks that these sorts of retail outlets are ‘not productive investments’ and Poland should be opening up more of its own stores.

The revelations came in an interview the minister did with the Financial Times. “Hypermarkets like Tesco are no investment. I mean they are not vital for economic growth,” she said.

She added that when she was working for the local authority in Szczecin, the port city in the northwest, she tried to ‘chase out’ these stores, and supported smaller, Polish shops.

The remarks caused some concern among foreign investors, unsurprisingly. Was this the right signal to send out to the markets at the start of a term in government? Lubinska was thought to be a technocratic financial moderate, with links to the free market Civic Platform, the largest party in the opposition.

Rafal Antczak, of the Center For Socio-Economic Analyses, and the man behind the economic policy of Civic Platform, told Polskie Radio that he was surprised by the statement.

“It’s hard to know why the new FM, who is trying to build a reputation with the market, where she is not well known, should do so by making such a controversial statement.’

But it’s not that hard to figure out. Chris Bobinski – one time Polish correspondent for the Financial Times – reminds us of political realities:

“Her statement won’t do her any good abroad, but at home – where the government faces a vote of confidence in the parliament on Thursday – it won’t do her any harm at all.'

To get through that vote, Law and Justice needs the support of several right wing and populist parties, such as the far-right League of Polish Families, the Peasant’s Party and the radical farmers union, Samoobrona. All those parties have mentioned before how unfair foreign supermarket chains are, as they push the smaller Polish units out of the market by cutting prices and making food cheaper, and offering better service and better produce and a wider choice.

No statement from Tesco’s, however, which is the UK’s biggest investor in Poland.

Meanwhile, all ministers are banned from making statements to the press in advance of the confidence vote. Which gives them more free time to cruise the isles at their local, Polish owned supermarket.

More on the ‘Polish gulags’

Polish officials deny existence of camps, but say that planes did land (pictured: Szymany airstrip?)

Human Rights Watch’s accusations (see previous two posts) that secret camps in Poland are holding terror suspects on behalf of the CIA have been denied by the Polish government. But they are not disputing that planes on route to Guantanamo Bay from Afghanistan did touch down in Poland. AP reports:

Polish authorities…confirmed Friday that a plane carrying Americans touched down at a little-used airport on the day when, a human rights group says, flight logs indicate that a C.I.A. aircraft landed there. Airport officials and border guards said that on Sept. 22, 2003, a Boeing passenger plane carrying seven people with United States passports touched down at midnight at Szczytno-Szymany Airport, a former military base in the northeastern pine forests. Szczytno-Szymany is not an operating airport, but planes may land if arrangements are made in advance.

The 737 – which was on the runway for about an hour - took on five other people traveling on United States passports with business visas attached.

AP reports that a former director of the airport, Mariola Przewloczka, says that the occupants inside the plane did not get off, but guards went out and boarded the 737.

HRW’s evidence is not just from flight logs, which they claim to have seen. The NGO says that it has matched the records with information gained from interviews with detainees at US camps.

The Red Cross expressed concern “at the fate of an unknown number of people captured as part of the so-called global war on terror,” whom, it said, were held at undisclosed places of detention.

In the US – where Bush’s approval ratings have hit an all-time low due to Republican in-house scandals, the war in Iraq, and incompetence in the aftermath of the hurricanes which lashed New Orleans and other parts of the southeast – is under yet more pressure because of the ‘Polish gulag’ allegations.

On the Australian ABC television’s Four Corners programme, David Hicks –who was an inmate at Guantanamo Bay - claimed that he had been taken to one of these ‘black sites’ prisons, but didn’t know where it was.

Washington has refused to say whether these camps exist or not.

If the allegations turn out to be true then Poland will be in a particularly difficult position politically, as this would contravene EU and human rights agreements which it has signed.

And so the Poland/CIA plot thickens…

Reactions to reports that the CIA has been putting terrorist suspects in secret camps in Poland.

The EU and human rights groups such as the Red Cross are demanding answers to the allegations by Human Rights Watch (HRW) that Poland is playing a crucial part in the US’s ‘war on terror’. HRW said that camps in Poland and Romania are being used to hold terror suspects picked up in Afghanistan and elsewhere. (see previous post).

Friso Roscam Abbing, a spokesman for the EU, said that the exisitence of these camps would violate the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Convention on Torture. Franco Frattini, the EU Justice Minister, said that he is ecnouraging member states to, “look into the matter.” The Red Cross – which has long suspected that the US is holding terror suspects in secret, somewhere - has asked Washington to clarify matters. And the Council of Europe is also investigating the claims.

The evidence…

HRW’s evidence seems to be based, only, on the flight logs of CIA aircraft from 2001 to 2004. "The indications are that prisoners in Afghanistan are being (taken) to facilities in Europe and other countries in the world," HRW’s Mark Garlasco, a former civilian intelligence officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency, told AP.

He said that in September 2003, a Boeing 737 flew from Washington to Kabul, Afghanistan, making stops along the way in the Czech Republic and Uzbekistan. On Sept. 22, the plane flew on to Szymany Airfield in Poland, and then to Sale, Morocco, and finally to Guantanamo Bay.

HRW would not say how they obtained these flight logs.

The planes…

Apparently, the CIA does not own any Boeing 737’s, the planes that HWR alledges that the prisoners are being carried to Poland in. But a CIA ‘shell’ company – Keeler and Tate, based at an address in Nevada, US - does own the planes.

The company, however, has no list of employers and no business partners. All business handled by the company passes through the well-known Republican lawyer - and ex-best buddie to Ronald Reagan (in the days when he was aware that he had best-buddies) - Paul D. Laxalt.

I told you the plot had thickened.

The theories…

Of course, this sort of story – with al-Qaeda terrorists being buried away somewhere in deepest Poland – is just the kind to stimulate theories and conspiracies.

My favourite, so far, is the one mentioned by Mr. Ost on the beatroot (see comment 13 on previous post). He wonders if all this is to with the new PM, Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz’s announcement this week that heads of Poland’s intelligence services (WSI) are in for the sack. ''The WSI will be eliminated, and replaced by other structures to guarantee Poland's security,'' said Poland's new PM.

Marcinkiewicz’s party, Law and Justice (PiS), have accused Polish intelligence services of still being under communist control, 17 years after the fall of the regime. In fact, the insistence that agencies such as WSI should be overhauled has been one of the many areas of friction between Law and Justice and Civic Platform recently, when they tried to, unsuccessfully, form a coalition. (PiS have also just announced that they are closing down the Gender Equality Office - another nest of commies, apparently).

So might the allegations be coming, not just from a bunch of plane spotters at HRW, but also from pissed off Polish intelligence officers who are in for an unexpectedly early retirement?

The intrigue grows and the plots will thicken...

Al-Qaeda in Poland? Gulp!

But they are not sneaking into the country under the noses of border guards. They are being brought here by the CIA!

EU Observer writes that speculation is growing that there are secret camps in Eastern Europe where crazed Islamic terrorists are being imprisoned. The EU Observer reports that:

“Human Rights Watch, a leading US-based NGO, has identified Poland and Romania as likely locations for the camps…‘We have a high degree of confidence that such facilities exist in at least Poland and Romania’, said Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director of the NGO”

Blimey! Human Rights Watch say that planes coming to and from Afghanistan show strong evidence that Poland could be one of the destinations. Gazeta Wyborcza is also quoting ‘sources’ that conform this. Apparently, in 2003, a 737 Boeing with the registration number N313P landed at an airfield in northern Poland, on route to Afghanistan.

The gossip is that the most likely place for a camp such as this is in Szymanow, about 120 kilometres from Warsaw, where there is an army base and an airfield with a 2 kilometers long landing strip, large enough to land a 737.

The Financial Times reports that: ”Poland's role, if confirmed, would be especially controversial, given that it has recently joined the European Union.”

Polish officials have been lining up to deny the allegations. The FT quotes Leszek Laszczak, spokesman for the Polish defense ministry:

"No people suspected of terrorist activities were held in military bases on the territory of the Republic of Poland, either as a result of an agreement with the US government or with any other institutions of the US."

Gazeta quotes former deputy defense minister, Janusz Zemke, as saying: "I don't know anything about planes or prisoners." And Zbigniew Siemiatkowski, liason officer to the CIA in 2003, said: " The USA has never proposed that we hold terrorists."

If the reports are true - and the US is not confirming or denying them, which probably means that they are – then what is going on in these places? Is Poland now home to the European version of Guantánamo Bay or Abu Ghraib? And how are they torturing the poor bastards? By force feeding them flaki?

The intrigue deepens and the plot will thicken...

The third twin?

A minority government was sworn in on Monday in Warsaw that must rely on some pretty strange characters to rule. (pictured: Andzej Lepper)

To govern, the Law and Justice party (PiS) – led by the two Kaczynski twins - must rely on support from populists, xenophobes and far-right catholic nationalists. As Polityka magazine notes this week, with Lech Kaczynski now in the presidential palace, and his identical twin brother Jarolsaw controlling things behind the scenes in parliament, a third personality will be increasingly influential over the fortunes of this government, the leftwing populist and nationalist, Andzej Lepper.

Is Lepper, then, the ‘third twin’ in government?

With the second largest party in parliament, Civic Platform (PO), refusing to join a coalition with PiS over differences in economic policy and the choice of personnel in cabinet, this leaves the way open for smaller parties to get in on the act and wield power way beyond their numerical number within parliament. The largest of these groups, Selfdefence, led by Lepper, will be particularly important to the future of PiS in government.

Lepper – in return for his support of PiS in the election of arch-Eurosceptic, Marek Jurek, as Speaker of Parliament last week - has now been given the prestigious job as one of his deputies.

This has amused many Poles, who remember when Lepper was given the same job by the SLD ex-communists in the last parliament. But when the head of Selfdefence lived up to form by causing a lot of trouble in the chamber, he was removed from his post in November, 2001.

Sefdefence will be demanding more subsidies and protection for farmers, and an increase in welfare spending for pensioners, the sick, and the 17.5% unemployed. Lepper is also pushing for less independence from parliament for the interest rate setting Monetary Policy Council.

These policies are an anathema to the party that has refused to enter into the coalition, the Civic Platform, which wants cuts in public spending, a flat income tax, and speedier privatisation of Poland’s key industries. Donald Tusk – PO’s defeated candidate in last month’s presidential election – said PiS has a choice: “You can't have cooperation with Civic Platform and Andrzej Lepper at the same time," he said, adding, “It’s us or them.”

Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz has claimed that he has ‘begged’ PO to join the coalition, and the 17 members of the new cabinet unveiled Monday include some sops to PO, including Zbigniew Religa as health minister (who said during the presidential campaign that the prospect of a PiS led government ‘frightened him”) and Teresa Lubinska as finance minister, who is a former member of a party closest in outlook to PO, the now defunct Unia Wolnosci.

PiS must also go looking for support from the far-right League of Polish Families. Included in their election programme was a call to tighten Poland’s already extremely strict abortion law. The League proposes a ban on all terminations, even when the pregnancy is the result of rape.

So, if PiS and PO cannot form a coalition together we are left with a typically confusing, Polish political situation.

Foreign newspapers are claiming that the new government represents a shift to the right in Polish politics. But they are wrong.

Normally, the economic programme of PiS – which shares some of the state protectionist tendencies of Selfdefence – would, in the old days, be described as being [whisper it] socialist. Add to the mix PiS, Selfdefence and the League of Polish Families’ conservative social policies, and what we have is a Polish minority government which must rely on support from conservative-socialists.

This is not a natural blending of flavours, and is about as appetizing as curried ice cream.

The personell gets political

Law and Justice (PiS) prepare to go it alone with a minority government in the Polish parliament.

After failing to get Civic Platform (PO), the right wing, free market orientated party, which came second in the parliamentary elections last month, on side, PM designate, Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, has announced that Law and Justice will form a minority government, making ad hoc, individual alliances to get their program through parliament.

Included in the cabinet will be Marcinkiewicz’s old economics teacher, Teresa Lubinska, as Finance Minister. She’s 53 years old from Szczecin and is seen as a financial moderate.

Unofficial sources are saying that ex-presidential independent candidate; Zbigniew Religa – who backed Tusk in the second round of the election – will be Health Minister. Radek Sikorski – the MEP (correction - see comment) for PiS`in Strasbourg will take up the Defense Ministry portfolio.

At the weekend, Donald Tusk, the defeated PO candidate in the recent presidential elections, tried to back Law and Justice into a corner by declaring that his party would not enter a coalition unless Jaroslaw Kaczynski – brother of president, Lech – take up the position of Prime Minister, instead of Marcinkiewicz. PO believes that Jaroslaw is going to be the real power within the government, and wanted this position made clear.

But Tusk must have known that the offer would be turned down flat. “I announced before the elections that I would by no means be prime minister if my brother, Lech, was elected president," Jarolsaw said. This situation would be completely unacceptable in the eyes of the public.”

He’s referring to opinion polls before the election, which said that Poles voter would not accept twins in the two top positions in the country (see Double Trouble).

Tusk had also demanded that PiS`make no more alliances with radical populist parties, Selfdefence and League of Polish Families, as they did last week when forcing through their choice of Parliamentary Speaker, Marek Jurek.

Marcinkiewicz has said that he still doesn’t rule out a government including PO, however.

But until he does, he has to rely on the support of the parties that Tusk had demanded Law and Justice stay clear of – which will make it more difficult still to get an agreement with Civic Platform.

EU: Polish side wants budget deal, quick…

…but Tony Blair wants to talk about ‘work-life balance’!

When they started the meet in the elegant Tudor surroundings of Hampton Court, just outside London – it’s the old palace where Henry VIII used to chase deer and plan radical haircuts for some of his wives - the Polish delegation were hoping the talks would be about the 2007-2013 budget, which they have to start preparing for as early as possible.

Danuta Hubner, the Polish EU Commissioner for Regional Affairs said this week: "The commission's concern is that time is flying, I would like to see this summit contribute to the decision on the budget.”

Blair, however – who occupies the six month rotating EU presidency at the moment – wants to put off those talks until December. He would much prefer to talk about the challenges of globalization, health systems and how the EU should tackle the fashionable (but crushingly boring) subject of ‘work-life balance’.

The British Finance Minster, Gordon Brown, has also commented that the talks should be about opening up EU labour and service markets to meet the challenges of a globalized world, where India and China are out-competing Europe.

When they turned up, the New Labour government must have been hoping to meet new, reforming governments from Germany and Poland, which will go along with these plans. Instead, Germany and Poland sent two ex-prime ministers, Gerhard Schroeder and Marek Belka.

Both countries have just had elections, and both electorates have disappointed the Blairites. Germany has produced a ‘national unity coalition’ – which is another way of saying ‘fudge’ - and Poland seems intent on not producing a coalition at all.

(Pawel Piskorski, MEP for Civic Platform (PO), told Polskie Radio today that he thinks the gap between his party and Law and Justice (PiS) is too wide to be bridged. He also thinks that the Kaczynskis have been dishonest with the voting public. All through the election campaign they were claiming that a coalition with Platform was the only option. But when they got into parliament, the senate, as the largest party, and now with the election of Lech Kaczynski in the presidential palace, their plans changed somewhat).

The largest party in the new Polish parliament, Law and Justice, has already been voting with two parties that will give Tony Blair sleepless nights (and mess up completely his own work-life balance) - the radical farmers’ union, Selfdefence, and the far-right nationalist, League of Polish Families. Both parties are not interested in opening up the EU and making it more flexible at all. They want to renegotiate Poland’s terms of entry into the 25-nation union and maintain a programme of protectionism and social welfare, very much like the French ‘social Europe’ model.

This week Law and Justice, along with their new nationalist friends, voted in as Speaker of the Lower House (a very important role in Poland) Marek Jurek, one of the PiS MPs who voted against Poland’s entry into the EU.

Blair was hoping that Poland would be a future ally in his bid to reform the EU. But Law and Justine, under the leadership of the Kaczynski twins, aim to scupper any tampering with the Common Agricultural Policy – Poland has two million farms, 1 in 4 of the population rely on agriculture for a living, and many of them voted PiS in the election.

So it’s hard to see a way out of the stalemate in Brussels, and the maze in the gardens at Hampton Court Palace. Tony Blair’s presidency – which started with a bang in July with his ‘we must reform’ speech - has been reduced to a whimper; his plans ruined by unpredictable electorates, and friendly coalitions that refuse to be born.

Going once, going twice…

Viktor Yushchenko will do anything to regain the West’s faith in the ‘Orange Revolution’.

Ukraine’s latest reality TV sensation hit the screens for one night only this week. But it was reality TV with an orange complexion.

Two of the world’s steel giants, Mittal (UK) and Arcelor (France), competed with Ukrainian firm LLSC-mart Group, in a live TV auction for the purchase of the nation’s largest steel producer, Kryvoryzhstal.

The Ukrainian company dropped out early, as the price went higher and higher. Millions gasped as Britain’s Mittal - the only one still standing – wrote out a bank transfer for 24 billion hryvna (about 5 billion dollars) to the Treasury.

‘Going once, going twice, gone - to the dodgy looking British bloke at the back’.

Lakshmi Mittal is Britain’s richest man, and has been accused of using political influence in a series of takeovers of eastern and central European businesses.

The aim of the show was to demonstrate to potential western investors that Viktor Yushchenko has got his grip back on the situation, after having to sack his entire ‘orange revolutionary’ government - including his number two, Yulia Tymoshenko - for being corrupt. And you can’t get any more ‘transparent’, and corruption free, than by selling off a national asset live on television.

The sale – at a price over 60% higher than Yushchenko was hoping for - is symbolic for him. The state firm had originally been sold a few years ago to the son-in-law of (the then) president of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma – a man accused of rigging elections, being involved in murdering journalists, and generally being a bad egg. Yushchenko had the deal revoked in parliament (when he still had his old government).

But his orange supporters are not happy. There were protests outside the TV studio as the auction went ahead, saying ‘Ukrainian steel should stay Ukrainian.’ And Valentyna Sesemyuk – who was in hospital at the time due to high blood pressure - resigned her post at the state treasury, in protest at the sale.

With economic growth slowing this year, and corruption clinging on to the fabric of Ukraine, and with political rivals waiting in the wings for a slip, the orange revolution must be tasting a little sour to Yushchenko, these days.

Huff, puff and bluff

Have talks between Law and Justice and Civic Platform broken down completely, or is this a game of ‘who blinks first’?

Donald Tusk, Platform’s failed candidate for president, told a press conference yesterday that Law and Justice is only interested in accumulating as many posts in the new government as possible, rather than reaching a workable agreement on which a new coalition government can be based.

The final straw for Civic Platform – which came second in this autumn’s general election – was when the post of Speaker in the Lower House was given to Law and Justice’s (PiS) candidate, Marek Jurek. Platform had another nominee in mind, who had made comments after the results came through on election night to the effect that the Kaczynski brother’s PiS coming first in the poll was ‘bad news for Poland’.

Law and Justice are now flirting with other populist parties, such as the radical farmer’s union, SelfDefense, and the far-right League of Polish Families.

The Prime Minister designate, PiS’s Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, has said that Platform have been offered nine ministries, and only about ten percent of the negotiations are proving difficult.

But Jan Rokita from Platform, says that the distance between the two parties is much greater than that. He sites taxation, labour market and unemployment, the health service and decentralization of the state (basically the whole program!) as being sticking points.

The question now is: who needs the other more, Law and Justice or Civic Platform?

Duck in deep water over death penalty and gay rights

It’s no good Kaczynski and co. complaining that ‘nobody warned us’ that the EU might not like his views on social issues.

The UK Independent reports that Poland’s new president, Lech Kaczynski, might loose Poland its voting rights in the EU. The newspaper says:

“Poland was given a blunt warning over its human rights obligations yesterday - after the election of a president who has sought to curb gay rights and campaigned for the restoration of the death penalty.“

On the election stump, Kaczynski has come across as a bit of a ‘hang ‘em and log ‘em type of politician. He is a populist, playing on fears of rising crime and the Gay Bogey Man, which a few deluded souls here believe is stalking the land, turning innocent young heterosexuals into raving queens.

When Kaczynski banned the Gay Pride march through Warsaw this year and last, human rights groups and EU spokespeople warned that he was breaking several EU obligations, and was going against Poland’s own Constitution.

A spokesman for the EU Commission told the Independent:

“One of the conditions for starting negotiations with a potential candidate country is that the existing death penalty must be abolished. [Kaczynski’s statements on this issue are] considered not to be in line with the basic values on which the EU is based."

Robert Kostro – who advises Polish MEP’s – told Polskie Radio this morning that the claim by the UK Guardian newspaper that the EU Commission is threatening Poland’s voting rights was false, and the Polish side was completely unaware of any such proposal.

“It would be very surprising if the Commission interfered so brutally in the internal matters of another state,” he said.

Oh, really? I know that Lech Kaczynski is not so keen on foreign travel, and that he is as geographically-challenged as his US counterpart, but surely he must of heard of a country called Austria. In 2000 the EU cut bilateral talks with that country after it included the far-right, anti-immigration, Freedom Party in its government.

It could be argued that the EU is trespassing on the internal matters of a sovereign state. But I am sure that Kaczynski, and his band of merry men, have already noticed that the one thing that the EU is really clear about– apart from defending farmers’ rights to get money for sitting around and doing nothing – is defending European standards of human rights.

Criticism from Brussels will bolster Euroscepticism among Kaczynski’s conservative supporters, of course. Which is a shame. Opposition to the EU should not be based on reactionary prejudices.

The merry men are also whispering that the only reason a fuss is being made over Polish human rights issues is because Brussels is worried that Kaczynski will be far more aggressive in defending Poland’s national position in the EU.

But watch how meek the hanging and flogging talk gets when the Polish government – if they have cobbled one together by then - tries to pursuade the EU to agree to the new budget at the special meeting this December. Poland is hoping to receive lots of nice subsidies for its farmers from that little cash-cow.

The Great Polish Opinion Poll Scandal!

Why did opinion pollsters get the result of the presidential election on Sunday so badly wrong?

If you work for a Polish opinion poll company, then I hope you are keeping your head down at the moment. Before you leave the house in the morning I hope you are disguising yourself with a wig and a pair of dark glasses. And if you have an opinion poll employee living next door to you, then you might be worried about them bringing down the price of property in your area.

And Polish pollsters should be feeling a little sheepish. Not only did all the main companies fail to predict the outcome and winner of Sunday’s presidential election, but they failed to predict accurately the result in the first round two weeks ago.

And in the lead up to the general election last month, most polls showed that the market orientated Civic Platform would be the largest party in parliament, with the conservative Law and Justice coming second. In the event, it was the other way round.

In the first round of the presidential election two weeks ago they said that the lead that Donald Tusk would take in to the second round would be around 6 percentage points. In the event it was only 3 percent.

And in the two weeks leading up to last Sunday’s two header, presidential shoot out, between Donald Tusk of Civic Platform and Lech Kaczynski of Law and Justice, virtually all polls predicted a win for Tusk, by a margin of six to ten percent.

And then, of course, Lech Kaczynski emerged as the eventual winner, by a margin of nine percent.

Cock up or cover up?

As you can see in the comments section in the last post on the beatroot, there have been people saying, “I told you so!’

Stefanmichnik comments after the result that pollsters dreaded came up:

“I've questioned you 2 weeks ago about opinion polls in Poland and the "special" role they play in the political campaigns in the postcommunist countries. What should the people who run Pentor, OBOP, Gfk and so one be doing this the morning?”

I imagine they should be putting a bullet in their heads, ‘stafan’.

As he points out, only one market research company picked up the swing to Kaczynski in those final days. And PGB pollsters has been consistently the only one to accurately reflect the amount of support for Kaczynski and his party right through this long election period.

So there has been a lot of hand ringing by market researchers in the wake of their darkest hour. Where did it all go so badly wrong?

But concern over the accuracy of political market research is not new here. Right wing groups have often pointed out how these companies underestimate their support. The leader of the far-right, League of Polish Families, Roman Giertych, points to the European parliamentary elections here last year, when pollsters predicted his party would get just 6% of the vote, when in fact, come polling day, they got 16 percent.

There has even been some dark mutterings from right wing circles that opinion poll companies are part of the post-communist establishment, and are, therefore, ‘part of Poland’s present day problems.’ Several of these companies, such as OBOP, CBOS and Demoskop have their roots back in the communist period, so you can see what the critics are insinuating.

In his post, stefanmichnik advises me to read a clipping from NIE magazine. This basically lists the technical problems and weaknesses of polls in Poland.

The head of the company that did best in the general and presidential elections, PGB, has said that one of things they don’t do, that some of the other companies who got it so badly wrong do, is use telephone polling. Telephone polling is usually the least accurate, and in Poland, especially so. Pollsters must get a representative sample of the population they are studying, and with only 3 out of 4 Poles having access to a fixed line phone, this is not the way to find that accurate sample. PGB also said that they never do surveys in people’s homes, but always on the street.

Concern over the inaccuracy of opinion polling has not been confined to Poland. Studies by Massachusetts University have found that those who are against liberalization of the economy in countries like Russia are regularly underrepresented in market research. Just like in Poland.

But there are no reasons to suppose that pollsters just ‘make things up out of thin air’, as some conspiracy theorists have done. Market researchers earn lots of profit every year from clients who presume that the results are accurate. They will not pay for things that are made up.

There are now calls for polling industry, worth billions of zlotys a year, to come under some sort of external control – maybe even from a government watchdog.

Just one thought to end with. A long time ago an American research institute went out into the street and asked people if they thought that the Metallic Metals Act should be passed through Congress. Forty percent of those polled said ‘Yes, it should.’ Of course, the Metallic Metals Act was a complete fiction.

When people are confronted by the nice lady from the opinion poll center, it seems that they can have opinions about things that simply don’t exist.

Perhaps people are telling pollsters, not what they think, but what they think the pollster wants them to think?

Twins rule Poland

Final result: Lech Kaczynski (PiS) 54.04%......Donald Tusk (PO) 45.96%......turnout 50.99%
The election of Lech Kaczynski as President of Poland is unprecedented.

Since the fall of communism in 1989, Poland has never had a rightwing government at the same time as having a rightwing president.

Well, they have now. Lech Kaczynski’s win in the second round of the presidential election on Sunday follows his party’s win in the general election last month. Head of Law and Justice (PiS) parliamentary grouping is Lech’s twin brother, Jaroslaw.

Tusk had struggled to persuade older, poorer voters that they were safe with his brand of free market politics. And it proves that you cannot win an election in Poland without the support of rural areas.

Election fatigue

In Poland, general elections happen every four years, presidential every five. This year they’ve happened simultaneously.

The two elections – and with the presidential going into two rounds – have left the Polish electorate ‘exhausted’. They complain, not just of the length of the hustings but also about the negative style of campaigning – especially from the Kaczynski camp (Grandpa-gate).

Pretty mild stuff, though, compared to what frequently goes on in the West. And have Poles already forgotten the 1995 presidential campaign, when Lech Wales and ex-communist, Aleksander Kwasniewski, knocked lumps out of each other in a particularly bloody battle?

But in the context of both Tusk and Kaczynski claiming to be a ‘fresh start’ for Poland, it hasn’t looked good from this side of the ballot box.

What has characterized the presidential election campaign this time has been the volatility of the electorate. Few of the candidates enjoyed any ideological commitment or loyalty from the voters.

The first out of the trap, and into the lead in the opinion polls, was heart surgeon, Zbigniew Religa. His strengths appeared to be that he was not a politician. The trouble was, he didn’t have any policies. His lead was always going to be temporary.

Kaczynski was next to be favourite, until the only SLD candidate thought corruption-free enough to stand for president, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, threw his hat into the ring.

But when Cimoszewicz dropped out after getting immersed in the inevitable corruption scandal, set up by his rightwing enemies, the way was clear for Tusk to go to the top of the polls. And he’s been there ever since, apart from one survey published on Friday, which showed Kaczynski staging his now usual last-minute comeback.

And then the farmers made up their minds, and voted for 'the Duck'.

Though voters found it hard to show loyalty to anyone, they were being offered a choice. Unlike in the UK, for example, there is a real difference of political outlooks on offer. True, in the final round, voters have had to choose between two candidates claiming to be rightwing. But the differences between them are significant.

Tusk stands for the young, socially aspirational middle class, who wants to put history behind them and just get on with things. Kaczynski appeals to older and poorer voters who fear the future, because they don’t particularly like the present.

Kaczynski has continually played on people’s fears about the future. He warns that Tusk and his party, PO, want to jump headfirst into a ‘liberal experiment’, by reducing tax radically and speeding up privatization. His mantra has been, ‘What about the poor, the old, the (18%) unemployed’?

The Kaczynsiki camp has also tried to play (somewhat ludicrously) to the far-right and reactionary gallery by raising the spectre of a ‘homosexual lobby’ in the EU, which is ‘infecting’ Polish society. With his appeals for a Poland ‘cleansed’ of these elements, and with a new civil service free of corrupt ex-communists, Kaczynski has occupied the moral high ground.

Kaczynski strategy has been to try and pick up left wing voters who want the state to protect them from the ravages of the market, and at the same time, appeal to the right, the fearful, the religious, who fear modernity.

A tricky act, but one that Tusk has had trouble dealing with. His party, Civic Platform, has been successfully branded, in the minds of many by Kaczynski, as standing for nothing but ‘money, money, money.’

But the Duck has had his problems too. He’s had to overcome voter’s fear of having a Kaczynski in the Prime Minister’s chancellery, and another, identical Kaczynski in the presidential palace.

Nepotism is seldom pretty, especially when it’s hatched from the same egg!

But apart from the ‘grandpa-gate’ scandal that never was, the better, more effective campaign, in both elections, has been the Kaczynskis’.

And now Lech and Jarolsaw have to do four years in government.

And then Poland will vote the ex-communists back in, just like they did four years go.

For more detailed results of the presidential election go to the PKW web site

It's Kaczynski!

A late swing gives Kaczynski the keys to the Polish presidential palace.

At 20.26 CET, exit polls are showing that the winner of the final round of the Polish presidential election is Lech Kaczynski, from the Law and Justice party. The poll for public television, TVP, showed that Kaczynski polled 53.52 percent, and Donald Tusk of Civic Platform received 46.48 percent.

The margin of error in these exit polls is three percent.

Turnout has been estimated to be around 50 percent, the same as two weeks ago in the first round.

In the first round of the election two weeks ago, Donald Tusk received 36 percent, to Lech Kaczynski’s 33 percent.

Kaczynski has trailed in the polls for the last few weeks behind the freemarket orientated Donald Tusk. But in the final few days he has picked up undecided voters, particularly from rural areas.

Going to the polling booths in support of Tusk today were two ex-presidents: Lech Walesa – who worked closely with Kaczynski, back in the days of the Solidarity trade union – and the outgoing president, and ex-communist, Aleksander Kwasniewski. Also voting for the Civic Platform candidate was the one time presidential candidate in this year’s race, independent, heart surgeon, Zbigniew Religa.

Kaczynski picked up the votes of the populists, Andrzej Lepper of the radical farmer’s union, Samoobrona, and Roman and Marciej Giertych, from the far-right League of Polish Families.

The polling stations closed nearly half an hour later than usual, at 8.25 p.m. due to someone at the station in the town of Legnica not setting their alarm, and arriving late for work this morning. Other election workers, who did manage to get out of bed on time, were left waiting outside a closed polling station at 4.30 in the morning. In the event, in the twenty five minutes that the Legnica polling station had to stay open, only three people voted. The nation had to wait an extra half an hour for three people!

Two men also died at polling stations when casting their votes today.

Full results will be announced Monday afternoon, but ten percent of the votes will be counted by 22.30 CET, Sunday.

Another late swing to Lech Kaczynski?

Opinion poll latest: PGB – Lech Kaczynski 50.2%!!! Donald Tusk 49.8%…turnout prediction 44%…….OBOP Donald Tusk 53% Lech Kaczynski 47%…
If polls are to be believed, the final round of the Polish presidential election will be a nail-biter. Lech Kaczynski appears to be benefiting from undecided voters coming his way.

Andrzej Lepper, a candidate in the first round of elections two weeks ago, has advised the 15% who voted for him to now vote for Kaczynski. The Peasant’s Party candidate, Jaroslaw Kalinowski – who received just under 2 percent in the first round - has also advised his voters to plump for ‘the Duck’, as Lech is affectionately known to his friends, and enemies.

The final week of campaigning has been dominated by the ‘Gandpa-gate’ (non) scandal, where supporters of Kaczynski have tried to drag up long-dead relatives as proof that Tusk is not as patriotic as he makes out to be. The allegations that one of his grandfathers fought for the Nazis in WWII have remained unproven.

The late swing of support to Kaczynski follows a pattern set in the General Election in September, and the first round of presidential election two weeks ago, where Tusk’s Civic Platform saw support hemorrhaging away to the Kaczynski twins’, Law and Justice party.

The PRS poll for Gazeta Wyborcza breaks down the votes by age. Tusk is by far the favourite for young voters. Seventy percent of the 24-and-unders will be ticking the box beside his name on Sunday, whereas sixty percent of the over-50’s will be voting Kaczynski.

Gay sex bomb?

Were the five bomb hoaxes, telephoned to Warsaw police Thursday morning, connected to Sunday’s election? The hoaxers claimed to be from a militant gay organization, that nobody has ever heard of before, protesting against homophobia in Poland. Both Lech, and his brother Jaroslaw, have made homophobic remarks during the election campaign (see Boring!).

The founding of a gay, bomb-planting Polish cell would be unprecedented in the history of the worldwide gay and lesbian movement.

So, time for a beatroot conspiracy theory: Could the real culprits behind the hoaxes be from far-right organizations connected to the League of Polish Families, trying to affect the results of the presidential election, in Kaczynski’s favour? The Law and Justice party has repeatedly tried to make this an election issue, by drumming up trog-like prejudices among its electoral base.

It’s either that, or Poland is the birthplace of the world’s first Gay Al-Qaeda!

next post: Sunday, 20.30 CET.

Birdbrains in a flap over flu

The media in a simmering panic, the government is cautious, but the rest Poland retains its commonsense.

If the press is to be believed, the apocalypse is coming, not on four horseback, but on the wings of migratory birds.

After a few were discovered with the virus in Romania, and then more in Ukraine, would Poland be next?

Attention has focused on the flatlands around the Szczecin area in the northwest of the country. This is where the birds flying in from the east stop off for a breather, before going on to warmer areas in the south.

The World Health Organization has estimated that between two and a half and 7 million humans could die from a pandemic of avian future.

The Polish government has responded by banning poultry imports from Turkey and Romania. Pigeon racing has been banned. Owners of chickens have been advised to keep their flock indoors.

Poland has two million farms, half of those are family-sized, subsistence patches of land – and many keep chickens.

So, with all this media coverage and dire warnings from the authorities of impending doom, you would expect Poles to be keeping a close eye out for sniffling chickens, and carrying out witch hunts against people who sneeze in public.

But no, they aren’t. This subject might be at the top of media agendas and anxious government meetings, and there has been a slight fall in sales of chicken, but the nation remains decidedly underwhelmed about the whole subject.

Poles just shrug their shoulders: What is the point in getting worked up about something that doesn’t yet exist?

Meanwhile, Hungarian researchers have completed preliminary work on a vaccine that could protect both humans and animals. The Prime Minister of Hungary, Jenoe Racz, announced Wednesday that antibodies to the virus have appeared in his blood following his inoculation several weeks ago.

That kind of positive attitude is exactly what we need – not the panic that is building in the west.

Poland gets more corrupt

Corruption watchdog, Transparency International, says that Poland has not got any less corrupt since joining the European Union last year.

From a survey based on responses from businesspeople, out of over 150 countries examined Poland ranks 70th least corrupt in the world (three places down on last year), but the most corrupt out of the 25 nations that make up the EU.

According to the report, Greece, Italy, the Czech Republic and Poland have performed relatively poorly in the last 12 months and "show little or no sign of improvement".

The report will surprise nobody, of course. The two election campaigns this autumn – for parliament and president – have been dominated by rightwing parties promising to clean Poland up after 4 years of rule by the ex-communist, SLD government. The Law and Justice and League of Polish Families have been calling for a complete clean sweep of government and civil service to get rid of corrupt, ‘communist’ elements.

Out of the post-communist countries to join the EU in May, 2004, Estonia is the least dodgy, says TI – influenced, they say, by the Nordic culture of strong civic society and good governmance.

Fuzzy math

School lessons in Lukashenko’s Belarus just don’t add up.

According to the autumn edition of the Belarusian Review (volume 17, No. 3), a re-published 12 year old textbook used in middle school revision classes in that country includes ‘sums’ such as Nato + US = War, and Nato + Go Home = Peace!

The maths textbook was written at the time when Clinton and co. were bombing Serbs during the war in the Balkans. President Lukashenko is well known for his belief that the US, the EU, and a whole host of other acronyms are plotting the downfall of his regime. Are Belarusian school kids being taught to hate the US while learning their logarithms?

But Yaushen Barabatau, one of the book’s authors, told RFE/RE: “I don’t think these rebuses have any political or ideological underpinning.”

So can we expect more sums in the next edition having a go at Bush and Blair’s disastrous little jaunts into Iraq, or even Iran? Maybe they could include something like: US + UK + Iraq – WMD = 100.000 casualties 4 Zero?

Apparently not: “Serbia is an Orthodox country, dear to us,” said Barabatau, “ Our brothers live there. We perceive that a war against them is a war against us. But Iraq – it is not so painful for us.”

Well, that’s OK then.

School cheats and dodgy politicians

Cheating in school and university becomes an election issue.

The heavyweight UK Economist (Oct 4) magazine reports that thousands of pens that write with invisible ink, and have a small ultra-violet light at the end with which the ink can be read – are flying off the shelves of stationary stores in Poland. It’s no coincidence that the new academic year has started. The pens are ideal to cheat in exams with.

Cheating at school in Poland is endemic. Anyone who has worked in the education system here (as I have done) will tell you that it is not just the thick students that do it. They defend themselves by claiming that it is ‘part of our culture’, and was a way of ‘resisting’ the communist educationalists.

And it’s not just the students who are to blame. Teachers have been turning a blind eye to this nonsense for generations.

Things are getting better. The matura school-leaving exam is now being marked by external examiners, so the temptation for teachers to tweak the grades has gone.

But teachers are still in denial about cheating in class. After a particularly nasty encounter with lecturers at Warsaw University when I was promoting the magazine I used to work for, we decided to do something about it, and run a series of articles about the subject (see Honesty in the classroom?). And then we sat back and waited for the letters and emails to start coming in.

In the end we received just one letter.

The Law and Justice Party(PiS) – which stands on a platform of tackling corruption in public life, has pointed out the obvious: corruption and cheating in schools are linked. In the market square in Krakow, reports the Economist, PiS staged recently a little drama to illustrate the point: “Six ‘students’ struggle to complete their final exam paper. One by one, they are caught cheating, and forced to stand up, showing their masks: well-known corrupt politicians and businessmen.”

The article also points out that the word for cheating in Poland – sciaganie – suggests ingenuity, not dishonesty. “Only when Poles find a pejorative term will this dubious habit loose its moral immunity,” concludes the magazine

Grandpa-gate: the story continues...

Did Donald Tusk’s dad’s dad fight in the German army during WWII?

Well, two days after the story broke (see previous post) - and much frenzied digging around by journalists - we now know, for sure, that Donald Tusk’s granddad didn’t do the unpatriotic thing and fight in the trenches for Hitler.

But Donald Tusk’s granddad’s brother did!

In August 1942, Donald Tusk’s granddad’s brother signed up with the Wehrmacht army. His career fighting for the Nazi’s was a short one, however. In late October he deserted, somewhere in Western Europe. And a few weeks after that, there are documents showing that he was fighting for a Polish resistance unit.

Tusk himself has expressed surprise over the revelations – such as they are – as that generation of his family never talked about the war, all that much, he said.

But his grandpa’s brother’s actions were not unusual ones during the war. Many Poles escaped to France, Holland, Norway this way, and then joined up with resistance movements, or the allied army.

TVN’s evening news program spent six minutes, and two different pieces, on this non-story. What will the next revelation be? That the Donald Tusk camp leaks an internal memo showing that Lech Kaczynski’s great-great-great-great grandma had a dog that once pissed down the boot of Napoleon Bonaparte while he was passing through Poland on his way to fight the Russians, therefore proving that the Law and Justice Party are not serious about getting rid of the zloty and introducing the Euro? Perhaps.