Polish Political Roulette: A winner every time?

You might say that Polish voters are a fickle group. At least seemingly more so than Polish-American voters with their entrenched voting habits.

Not once have Poles given any political party a second term of power since throwing off the yoke of socialism and the misery that 60 years of tyrannical communism brought them.

Poles’ yearning for freedom and liberty is hardwired into their DNA.

Kosciuszko & Pulaski

Kosciuszko and Pulaski didn’t have a stake in whether our American revolution was successful or not. Yet, they came here serving as generals on their own volition, where freedom was being defended, to serve it, and to live or die for it.

Stubborn and strong-minded? Do you know any dyed in wool Poles who are not?

During the communist era, one might imagine Poles were as weary as Colonial Americans at the Boston Tea Party struggling against the brute force of a much too powerful government. The socialist regime in Poland was intervening in daily life and taking away incentives for rugged individual entrepeurship by bulldozing the playing field with Politburo machinery and redistributing wealth within the dictated parameters of Marxist philosophy that was detested by most Poles.

Since crushing the Iron Curtain in 1989, they voted for a different government each time parliamentary elections were held insuring by fiat that no political party got too entrenched in power.

In spite of revolving door politics, Poland shot straight up the economic ladder, from an also ran country to rank 18 in terms of GDP across the globe.

Fresh ideas and policies came with each election. Perhaps that is one of the leading factors why Poland was the only EU country to dodge the economic meltdown.  They were the only EU country to have back-to-back years of positive economic growth and never having a down year.

Most spectators say on October 9, the incumbent Civic Platform party is likely to be returned as the majority or leader of a coalition government breaking the one term tradition when voters choose expanding prosperity over policies thereby rewarding Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s party with victory.



Andrew Michta



"If you look at the moving sands of the Polish political scene since 1989, a victory for the current governing party would show a continuity that hasn't been seen since the beginning of the transformation," said Andrew Michta, head of the German Marshall Fund's Warsaw office. A Tusk win "would mean people were responding to how full their purses are rather than reacting to ideological issues."

Maciej Krzak

Impervious to global financial catastrophes, living standards in Poland continue to rapidly advance unlike the recent massive loss of individual wealth in America. "The Polish economy really is in pretty good shape -- that's not just some kind of government propaganda," said Maciej Krzak, head of macroeconomics at the Warsaw-based Center for Social and Economic Research. "Poland can aspire, with time, to become one of the EU's largest economies."

Even though Tusk’s party lacks substance and ambition, Poland’s economy grew 4.4% from 2007 to 2010 while the EU average was barely one-tenth of one percent.

The reasons why Poland kept its economy growing right through the thick of the Great Recession has been discussed in previous columns. One could reasonably argue that Tusk holds a fist full of aces dealt by the practicality and common sense embraced by Poles with their reborn liberty.

After Poles freed themselves from a society of socialist dependency, it did not matter who was in office. Nobody in power could diminish the individual’s determination to prosper under newfound freedom. They molded their hills and mountains on that once desolate playing field by the sweat of their ingenuity and enterprise.

The political pundits in Warsaw predict Civil Platform will be the first party to achieve back-to-back wins in parliamentary elections. However, I’m a bit hesitant to go along.

At least now you have Huggies

I contend that if voters in their twenties who at best were in diapers during the Communist Era, are not represented in large numbers at the polls, there’s a chance that the tradition of not re-electing the incumbent government will stand.

Tusk’s party has become increasingly “content-free”, just like the MTV generation. They realize if they stand for something they might offend somebody. So, they mumble vaguely, promise to work hard, and all the while get less and less specific about issues. Finding a position paper from them is next to impossible.

With the lack of principles and conviction, the centrist party is hoping to win by presenting themselves as a “safe pair of hands” to keep steering Poland around Europe’s economic crisis.

Now, there’s a good question for fickle American voters.

Are you in good hands?

Keeping Abreast of EU Summit

So much for the promise 'to die for' the square root method to balance voting power by member nations of the EU.

The Polish government is being feted at home after agreeing to a last minute compromise at a summit of European Union leaders on a new Constitution. Simultaneously, criticism of its negotiating style is growing abroad.

Remarks by Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski ahead of the summit that Poland would have a population of 66 million today rather than the current 38.5 million if it had not been for the war irritated EU leaders.

Germany's biggest selling tabloid, Bild, was critical of EU concessions to the Polish government. "Why is Poland getting extra wurst?" the paper asked.

Who really came out ahead depends on who you talk to.

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At home in Poland a poll shows a majority of Poles got some good concessions. But, a sizable minority question success at the summit.

The right wing movement headed by former parliamentary speaker Marek Jurek, who left the ruling Law and Justice to set up his own party, has criticized the Polish performance at the Brussels EU summit.

Marek Jurek said that the main aim of the Polish government had not been achieved – and that is the introduction of the square root system of voting. Jurek also pointed that the compromise on ignoring the Christian values in the future European Treaty is a harmful decision. The late JPII wanted Poland to be the moral compass of Europe.

Jurek underlined that this important stand for Poland was not defended, and that is wrong both for the public opinion as well as in practical debates on social policies, education or family. Marek Jurek demanded that the Polish head of diplomacy presents a detailed report of the summit.

The right-wing Warsaw weekly magazine Wprost, which backs the conservative nationalist regime of the prime minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, and his twin brother, the president, Lech Kaczynski, has the cover of its latest issue as a montage showing "a beaming chancellor Merkel as "Europe's stepmother" baring her breasts to nourish the infant Polish twins.

In an article in the magazine, a Polish government official reacted to the weekend summit in Brussels, at which Poland stood alone threatening to wreck a deal and won big concessions from Mrs Merkel, by arguing that Germany was treating its eastern neighbour "neo-colonially" and refusing to accept it as a European partner. He accused Mrs Merkel of "humiliating" Poland at the summit because she was "full of complexes herself".

In the run-up to last week's summit, the Polish prime minister stunned colleagues in Europe by seeking to parlay Polish suffering at the hands of the Nazis into greater power in EU councils. Had it not been for the Nazi occupation and murder of six million Poles, half of them Jews, Poland would be much bigger and more powerful in the EU, he argued.

Mr Kaczynski lost, but got a new EU voting system postponed, guaranteeing that in crucial talks on EU budgets in 2013-14, Warsaw will be in a much more powerful position than it might have been.

But Mariusz Muszynski, the Polish ministry official who advises on relations with Germany, said in Wprost that Berlin still refused to treat Poland as "a partner" in Europe. Wprost, which has a circulation of 700,000, has often used graphics to provoke Germany. Its editor-in-chief, Stanislaw Janecki, defended the latest image. "We just wanted to have a bit of fun," he told Spiegel Online.

In the final analysis, the cover slams both Merkel and the Twins. Hey, it's the free press in an open marketplace of ideas. Crude, but free of censorship.

See also post below. And...

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Hillary tells Poles what to do

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) wrote to the Polish prime minister requesting that Poland enact a restitution law for property confiscated during the Nazi and communist eras.

Przemyslaw Gosiewski of the PM's office has stated that compensation claims of former owners who lost their property in the wake of the Second World War should be addressed to Germany and not Poland.

Commenting on Hillary Clinton's recent appeal to Polish authorities to settle the issue of Jewish property losses as speedily as possible, Gosiewski reminded the world that it was the Germans and not Poles who deprived Polish inhabitants of Jewish descent of their material wealth.

Hillary, restitute the Native Americans - Maybe Lech Kaczynski should write you a letter.