Abortion, euthanasia: so give us a referendum!

Pro-life and pro-choice supporters march through Warsaw today. (photo: Gazeta Wyborcza)

Two separate marches merged into a demonstration of 4,000 people in front of parliament, where lawmakers were debating amending the constitution to tighten Poland's anti-abortion law, already among the most restrictive in the EU.

See here and here for details.

The pro-lifers want to stop even women who were raped having an abortion, and want to enshrine into the constitution the ‘right to life from conception to natural death’ into the Polish constitution.

Usually, a change in the constitution requires a referendum to decide. That’s why there was one before joining the European Union.

So why do you think that the League of Polish Families, Radio Maryja – and the ruling Law and Justice – are trying to avoid having one?

Because they think they would lose.

I called for a referendum on this issue a long time ago. We need to debate this issue in this country.

The only folk who should be afraid of democracy are those who don’t feel very comfortable living in one.

See video of pro-life march at tvn24.pl

Time for Polish politicians to take early retirement

A whole generation of Polish politcos – from both sides of the divide – have failed to grasp the meaning of a ‘free and open society.’ It’s time for them to be forced to ‘spend more time with the family’.

The current government’s de-communization zeal is insatiable. All journalists – public or private - born before 1972, must now be vetted for communist era collaboration.

Brilliant idea, isn’t it?

For some time now, the government has been requiring employees of public media - no matter how lowly – to fill in a form (downloaded from the internet) with a few basic personal details, and then send it to be vetted.

Employees wait a few weeks and back comes a little certificate saying that you were not a collaborator, or otherwise. If you don’t get a clean bill of health then you are sacked.

Well, now the government is insisting that private media forces its journalists to go through the same procedure.

Amazingly, blogs appear to also come under this law.

There has been lots of comment on the net about this – of the English articles see here and here.

I cannot think of an example in any other ‘western’ ‘democratic’ country where the government is trying to intrude in the affairs of private media in this way.

Private media are a little upset, unsurprisingly, and are threatening civil revolt against such a totalitarian-flavoured move. The government is threatening fines against private media that do not comply.

The human rights implications of this was noted in the US state department’s annual review of human rights (though just how the present Whitehouse feels qualified to lecture others about human rights is a mystery).

Same but different

It’s sad to have to say that many in the present government are demonstrating the same mentality as those who they so despise – communists. For both, a free and open civil society is seen as a threat to their own survival.

Since 1989 Poland has been blessed (irony, sarcasm) with a generation of politicians, from the left and right, which have not demonstrated an understanding of how modern democracies work.

Much of the left have been prone to seedy corruption, and there has been an ‘old boy network’ that has done nicely from the change from communism to capitalism. They have also been criminally negligent of the public services, managed in the way that they always have been: badly.

On the other side we have a generation of politicians who represent those left behind in the post communist bun fight. But though oppositional, they seem to have internalized far too much of the old regime that they fought against.

And this has led to an inability to take criticism in the media.

There are a few exceptions (which a camel could count on the fingers of one hoof) but for much of the old left and right, coming to terms with basic freedoms and human rights has been difficult and they are stopping Poland maturing into a modern democracy.

What Poland needs is a younger generation of politician who has not been so badly scared, and deformed, by the experience of the People’s Republic of Poland.

So forget vetting private journalists born before 1972.

I propose a new law which says that if you were born before 1972 in Poland then you shouldn’t be allowed to be a politician.

It’s time for the post-communist failures to take their free bus pass.