Posted on 01/20/2005 6:52:36 AM PST by Grzegorz 246
Fifteen years after the fall of communism, the party of former Communists may be purged, amid a wave of accusations of sleaze and deceit, from Poland's political scene.
Two of the most powerful figures of the ruling Democratic Left Alliance have been forced from office in embarrassing public accountings over the past 18 months. The alliance, known as the SLD, saw public support bobble between 5 percent and 10 percent in opinion polls in the past couple of months, the worst showing of any governing party since 1990.
It is an election-year comeuppance for the party that once touted its leaders as the reformed heirs of Polish politics and the most able of bureaucrats to provide a smooth economic transition. SLD's slide in the polls, touched off in 2003 by a failure to quell double-digit unemployment, promises upheaval just when Poles, in their first year within the European Union (news - web sites), were hoping for an uneventful era of good times.
"Ruling during a transformation is a hazardous activity, and this is the decay of another ruling party but with an exception," said Lena Kolarska-Bobinska, director of the Institute of Public Affairs, a non-partisan public policy think tank in Warsaw. "The SLD was perceived as the guys who knew how to rule. And in the middle of upheaval last time [in 2001], voters went to the polls figuring `OK, maybe they weren't the good guys, but at least they knew how to go about doing things.'
"The public now is realizing that these guys were neither moral or efficient."
Parliament Speaker Jozef Oleksy woke up last month to read a one-word indictment in the headlines--LIAR--when a high-profile court ruled that when he was seeking public office years ago, he did not come clean about past collaborations with secret security forces. It was the latest alleged wrongdoing among the SLD elite.
Oleksy, who was forced this month to resign the speakership, now is embroiled in a fight with the court, which screens politicians to keep former collaborators out of public office. The court found him in violation of a law that requires candidates to reveal past spying for Communist Party agents before running for office.
Oleksy said he never spied. Having reviewed secret files for the second time in a six-year battle with Oleksy, the court found that he met routinely in the 1970s with a special military unit and was paid to suggest names of other potential informants.
Oleksy is facing a showdown that could end his political life. Even party loyalists recognized that the court's decision meant he had to resign as parliamentary leader.
"I might have misled but did not consciously lie," Oleksy said in his defense during a national television broadcast before his resignation as speaker. Still, in an interview last week at SLD headquarters, he acknowledged that the SLD was at risk of collapsing because its members had offended the middle class. His case was unfair, he maintained, but scandal has overwhelmed the party.
Ex-speaker assesses party
"The public began seeing this as a party that doesn't obey the law," Oleksy said. "And the problems with unemployment and public finance made us look like we had forgotten the middle class. . . . The problem, I think, is we became too self-confident."
Political observers said the former Communists also miscalculated how much present scandals would dredge up resentments from the past.
Poland has been rocked by three scandals over bribes for legislation involving the sale of lucrative television stations, sweetheart deals for oil companies and, most recently, questions about the privatization of Poland's national insurance company.
Inquiries in two of the cases were televised. For the first time, millions of Poles could judge for themselves just how politics in the free market is played.
The prime minister at the time, Leszek Miller, another SLD leader, was a star witness in the inquiry over a scheme by film producer Lew Rywin to solicit a $17.5 million bribe from the publisher of Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland's leading newspaper, in exchange for allowing the paper to purchase a television station.
Miller denied involvement in the scheme, but members of parliament repeatedly voiced suspicions that the deal could not have happened without his knowledge. Miller was not found to be directly linked to the deal, but some close associates were implicated.
Miller's testimony, however, revealed schmoozing and dealmaking among members of the former regime, politicians and private businessmen that many Poles had not imagined. His testy and high-handed manner on the witness stand touched off press ridicule and became another bit of evidence that left the public disenchanted and the former Communists vulnerable.
A day after Poland entered the European Union last spring, Miller resigned amid falling poll numbers and defections within the SLD.
Elections scheduled
Elections are scheduled for this fall but could take place earlier if the government calls for an early vote.
"What happened with SLD is people finally got to see what politics is really like," said Jerzy Urban, a former spokesman for the Communist regime and the publisher of an independent weekly in Warsaw. "People didn't understand that the political life doesn't always look like that written in the constitution. There are spheres of influence, and these were the politicians who knew how to use them."
They need to abandon socialism. What are the chances of that?
Polska Pingski.
I don't know if the ping list has any comments on this article.
It depends on what you call socialism.
Ping
Thanks for ping. That is exactly what I trying to explain you recently. Privatizations it is always great chance for political thieves.
Every slimy politician in the world thinks he can use this kind of Clinton-speak and get away with it. The fact is, it's very difficult to do it well -- Clinton is about the only person who could pull it off, and even he had some trouble.
PiS is center party in your opinion? Kaczynski would be really mad if he would heard that he isn't righist.
Kaczynski/PiS is f***ing socialist when it comes to economy, conservative anywhere else.
I agree with Grzegorz, it would be the best solution. I think that PiS would take with pleasure justice and foreign policy or even president cause that is more popular job than economy or health resort which probably will goes to PO.
I hope that Kaczynski will have guts enough to swallow the bitter pills of economic reforms necessity. I mean privatization of certain quasi-socialist areas under strict control of the government, of course. And most of all cut-on's the administration "kasta". Otherwise it will truly be a failure.
Recent (feb 2005) polls:
PO: 28% (plus probably 2% from UPR)
SRP: 14%
LPR: 12%
PiS: 11%
SLD: 8% (plus probably 2% from UP)
PSL: 6%
SdRP: 5%
Others: 16% (12% without UPR and UP)
+/-3%
PO-PiS or PO-LPR. Kaczynski (leader of PiS) will have to accept PO economic point of view.
Where is new pinky-pinky PD? ;)
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