The Flying Kaczyński Brothers

I’m sure that these practices (first paragraph of Michnik) are not the innovations of the Kaczynski twins. All Hungarian governments after 1989 are guilty too, for example.

I stopped following Polish politics after Law and Justice went into a coalition with the League of Polish Families – I just couldn’t stomach it anymore.

For what it’s worth though, Law and Justice started out as a center-right anti-corruption, reform of the criminal code party (hence the name). It was basically the only political party not up to its ears in financial scandals. L. Kaczynski was the most trusted politician in Poland when he was mayor of Warsaw. Which is why they won the election.

But other than being clean they’ve proven to be pretty damn incompetent, opportunistic with a heavy authoriterian streak.

novakant,
My understanding of this is that the CIA prisons (if they existed, which they probably did) were approved by the previous, Post-Communist, president Kwasniewski. The Kaczynskis actually were the ones who had them closed down. There’s a good bit of cloak and dagger, mystery, who the hell knows what really happened here type of stuff involved though. Of course all the standard denials have been made.

Either way though you can’t blame the Kaczynski for this one.

their distrust and suspicion of the intentions of Germany is to some extent justified

Their utter lack of understanding of the consensus culture of the EU, and their almost comical “tough” talk (e.g. the “square root or death” bit) certainly aren’t, though.

There’s nothing strange about it, really. These folks are every eurosceptic hack’s wet dream. Enlargement means the notion of a political personality for the EU is dead, all ur base r belong 2 us and so on.

Cue in the federalist straw-man/bugaboo, intent on sneaking all of that intolerable, illegitimate constitution past the poor hapless sovereign peoples of Yurp, etc etc.

Which is utterly mind-numbing bollocks, because significant parts of the (ill-named) constitution will indeed be dropped; because a majority of people in France in the Netherlands, in spite of remaining adamant in their refusal of the aforementioned ill-named text do want a way out of the impasse ; and because anybody who followed the debates in those countries before the referenda knows that trying to give the results of those referenda a Toryesque spin is far, way, a whole fucking lot more wrong-headed than anything that may come out of Brussels.

On a more general note, it is to be noted that the ultra-canny, mostly anglospheric anti-EU set may have outsmarted themselves in the long run. The bigger the common market, the harder it is to contemplate to leave. Things move. If you can’t afford to get out, you’ll have to move further in…

The Poles do have legitimate grievances: the introduction of transitional restrictions on Polish workers’ access to the labour markets of some of the EU 15, particularly Germany; the xenophobic undertones of the discussion of the Bolkenstein directive, etc. But the blame somehow always ends up getting dumped on Germany, although other member states are to be credited for innovations like the plombier polonais .

Poland has its interests, there’s nothing wrong with that. But the treatment that this wondrous duo and the disgraceful coalition they head get in much of the English-speaking press is nothing short of an embarrassment. You cannot do “ambivalent” with people who play in Berlusconi’s ballpark.

The Kaczynskis are a scandal and a disgrace. Like Berlusconi, only worse.

I’m not going to claim to know much about Polish politics (that issue of the NYRB is in my bag for reading after work), but it can’t be a healthy body politic when you have major parties called “Law & Justice”, “Self-Defense” and “League of Polish Families”, let alone to have them in a governing coalition.

“the Germans are to blame”: natch, particularly that bugger Gutenberg.

As an aside, Michnik himself is a piece of work. And in the NYRoB piece he really manages to shine with hypocrisy.

I’m no fan of the Kaczynskis and to properly express how I feel about the two other coalition parties I’d have to resort to colorful but pretty much untraslatable Polish phrases. However, that the Kaczynskis

have attempted to blur the separation of powers in order to strengthen the executive branch they control. … In the ministries and state institutions, numerous civil servants have been summarily replaced by unqualified but loyal newcomers. The independence of the mass media—especially of public radio and television— was curtailed by changes in personnel instigated by the government and by pressures to control the content of what was published and broadcast. The Kaczyński administration’s efforts to centralize power have limited both the activities of the independent groups that make up civil society and the autonomy of local and regional government. …

is pretty much business as usual in Polish politics when a new government takes over. Most of what the Kaczynskis have done in the regard to the above is remove people, many compromised by political and financial scandals, who acquired their positions through exactly a similar process that occured when the PostCommunists were in power (who in turn where removing folks put there by the previous AWS gov). The “independence of mass media” phrase is particularly cute. And good portion of the blame for the fact that these kind of shenengians are possible after every elections lies with Michnik himself, who in the early 90’s was so sure that the people HE liked were going to be in power “for the next fifteen years” that he ceasesly propogandized for exactly the kind of institutions and policies that now make it possible for the Kaczynskis (and others before them) to do these things. To pretend that the Ks are unique in this regard (putting “their” people in, taking the “old guard” out) or that their actions are threat to democracy, whereas the exact same behavior when engaged in by other parties was not, is pure nonsense.