Via Baltica: humans versus the environment

Stop Press!!! the beatroot agrees with Polish prime minister...shock!!!...well, there is a first time for everything!!!...

Euro-green protestors get upset about a planned bypass around the Polish town of Augustow.

Greens are campaigning about a planned bypass around the northeastern town which will cut through the wetland area of Rospuda Valley. As usual, Greens turn to the EU for help. Environmental Data Interactive reports:

In December 2006 the European Commission launched legal procedures against the Polish government for consenting to a series of eight road developments along the Via Baltica route which are likely to damage important and protected sites.

The road developments as they are currently proposed run through the Augustow and Knyszyn primeval forests and the Biebrza Marshes National Park.

These areas contain a broad array of threatened wildlife including wolf, lynx and white-tailed eagles.

The road - part of the E67, or Via Baltica - will form a major link from Helsinki to Prague and greatly increase trade in the area.

I was talking to Kasia today, who is from Augustow. She says that most people in the town are for the bypass. Currently around one and a half million trucks rumble through the town every year, causing traffic accidents and casualties, damage and congestion. Ironically, Augustow is known as a health resort – the pollution caused by the traffic is damaging that reputation and the tourism that it attracts.

The EU has many designated protected sites in Poland, mostly in the east of country – an area of economic underdevelopment. Of course, nobody would casually want to damage areas of beauty. But sometimes humans, and economic development, have to come first.

I think this is one of those times. Poland badly needs better road transport, which at the moment is the most under constructed in Europe.

We are getting to the stage where an abstract idea such as to what constitutes what ‘natural’ is is taking precedence over human development. What Poland needs more than anything is economic growth. The Eurocrats in Brusesels, and Green NGOs from all over Europe (mostly city dwellers who have a romantic, yet detached idea of what ‘natural is) are trying to slow down economic progress here.

I think its time they were told that birds and wetlands come second; humans come first.

Rokita’s line in the sand

The splits in Civic Platform mainly revolve around one crucial question.

As we saw before the local elections recently all is not well on the opposition Civic Platform (PO) – in fact, a few party members seem set to fall off it.

The main Platform dissident is Jan Rokita (right of photo). The last line in an ‘open letter’ sent to head of PO, Donald Tusk (left), he demanded an answer to one simple question:

“Will you, or will you not, rule out completely an alliance with the ex-communist Left?”

For many Poles this is still a crucial issue. Most of my friends are what in the West would be called ‘liberals’ – on social issue many are even ‘center-left’. But none of them would entertain the idea of voting for the ex-communist SLD, or Marek Borowski’s breakaway party.

So any alliance after an election between PO and SLD would be a very difficult one, for obvious and understandable historical reasons. SLD etc are the heirs to a party that locked up Solidarity dissidents, murdered striking miners and so on.

So Rokita’s question is a pertinent one: would you be seen dead in bed with the reds?

At the time of writing, Donald Tusk has failed to give a clear answer – suggesting that he may be tempted to make this historic leap, if an election resulted in a hung parliament with a composition that demanded an alliance between SLD and PO.

And that is a distinct possibility. I get the impression that the Kaczynkis are tempted to go to the electorate again. With scandals rife within the two main junior political parties in the coalition, he may just have to. And as their support declines most of it is going to the Kaczynski’s Law and Justice.

So time for Tusk to give a clear-cut answer to Rokita might just be running out.

Is Donald Tusk Poland’s answer to Martin Luther King?

Er...no. He’s not. So what’s the sudden interest in protest marches, then?

Donald Tusk and his opposition Civic Platform – who up until now have apparently been on a campaign of virtual invisibility while the government tears itself apart – have suddenly sprung into action.

With the collapse of the coalition last week Tusk has tabled a motion for parliament to dissolve itself – the vote will take place on October 10. For it to succeed Jarolsaw Kaczynski’s ruling Law and Justice administration would have to have failed to form another coalition with the Peasant’s Party and others.

But what has really surprised many is Tusk’s announcement that he will be heading an anti-government protest march through the streets of Warsaw on October 7 – three days before the crucial vote.

Tusk can’t have been on a march of any kind since his days as a Solidarity activist in the late 1980s.

It is a little difficult to see why he, literally, is going down this route. He says that the action is to demonstrate against bad and dishonest government. Maybe he is trying to make connections between the present government and what is going on in Budapest at the moment?

Provocation?

Civic Platform’s candidate for Major of Warsaw, former Head of the Central Bank, Hanna Gronkiewicz Waltz, was screaming on the television yesterday (she does a lot of screaming) that a counter march by far right member of the ruling coalition League of Polish Families (LPR) should not be allowed to take place because of ‘possible violence’.

The League of Polish Families has called in the past for gay activists not to be allowed to march through the capital.

What LPR and Hanna have in common is that they seem to think that the right to protest is uniquely theirs.

I also heard on the radio today someone droning on that the march by Civic Platform supporters was a ‘provocation’ to the League’s more thuggish supporters to attack them. Therefore, said radio commentator, it would be unwise for the march to take place.

But why should a group call off a demo because some other group might cause violence? We pay the police to protect our rights and its up to them to keep the thugs away from a peaceful protest. It’s not up to Civic Platform to deny their own right to demonstration, it’s up to the law to protect those rights.

It will be interesting to see what happens on the march October 7, and of course the beatroot will be there to record the whole thing.

How many will turn up? If the number is low then Tusk will have a large dollop of egg on his face – even if LPR don’t throw any at him.

And will Donald Tusk lead the crowd in a rousing rendition of that old Civil Rights classic from the 1960s, ‘We shall over come…’? Does he have any Joni Mitchell in his record collection? Does he have a record collection? And will he, as he addresses the crowd on October 7, start his speech with the words: “I have a dream….”?