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.