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The Forthcoming Death of Poland's Fourth Republic?

category international | politics / elections | news report author Monday August 13, 2007 12:48author by Damien Moran Report this post to the editors

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Roman Giertych - Leader of the Far-Right LPR - Their elderly female followers stand out by wearing Mohair hats<Image from www.feedshow.com>
Roman Giertych - Leader of the Far-Right LPR - Their elderly female followers stand out by wearing Mohair hats

Many Irish people now either live or work alongside Polish people. An estimated 200,000 or so who have come from all over Poland for better wages and lifestyles, especially since their country's accession to the EU in May '04. So I hope the following article will help Irish readers gain some insight into the recent political shenanigans in Poland and the upcoming elections which will probably take place at the end of October this year, two years earlier than expected. It may also help put your curiosity about Polish election posters, which are sure to spring up throughout Ireland in the coming weeks, into some context and give you an idea about the various parties involved in the Polish political system. So here's a little starter for a coffee break conversation with your Polish colleague tomorrow morning.

End of the Right-Wing Coalition
Poland's right-wing Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc) party have decided to go it alone, banishing the far-right wing League of Polish Families (Liga Polskich Rodziny) and radical populists Self-Defence (Samobroona). The right-wing government, were elected in 2004 after ousting the scandal-riddled post-communist party, Social Democratic Alliance (Sojusz Lewica Demokracja), from power on an anti-corruption ticket. The Law and Justice party is headed by the controversial Jaroslaw Kaczynski, brother of the president, Lech Kaczynski - both famous child actors in Poland after starring in a 1962 film heavily promoted by Communist propaganda masters , 'The two who stole the moon.' Their father was a soldier in the Home Army or Armia Krajowa (AK) resistance to the Nazis in World War II and their mother was a philologist in the Polish Academy of Sciences. They were both members of Solidarnosc Trade Union in the 80's, Lech after his internment under the Communist martial law period of General Jaruzelski.

Their authoritarian form of rule, Euro-scepticism, sychophantic attitude to the Bush administration, homophobic policies and links to the powerful anti-semitic Redemptorist priest and media mogul, Fr. Tadeusz Rydzyk, have led to mainly bad publicity in the international press and decreasing support amongst the Polish electorate due to people growing tired of their policies which have failed to deliver sufficiently on issues like increasing wages for public service sector workers and health/education/civil service sector reform.
The leader of the former farmer's trade union turned Self-Defence parliamentary party, Andrzej Lepper, was fired from his posts of Minister for Agriculture and Deputy Prime Minister last month for his purported involvement in a land corruption deal. But the rest of this article will concentrate on the most dangerous and thankfully now former member of the crisis-hit coalition, the quasi-fascist League of Polish Families.
http://www.thenews.pl/archives/1007-Polands-ruling-part....html

Roman Giertych - out on his ear at last
Whatever one makes of the breakup of the Polish gvt. and the probability of an equally crap one replacing it, I am personally rejoicing about the fact that Roman Giertych, quasi-fascist Minister for Education, will be given the boot today by the lead coalition gvt. partner Law and Justice henchmen, 'either ya love them or hate them,' the Kaczynski twins.

Giertych, from the ultra right-wing national conservative League of Polish Families, has been a real pain in the ass for progressive and sane people since taking up his post under the unstable coalition gvt. of Law and Justice and the radical populists of Self-Defence. From trying to get Kafka, Dostoevsky, and Gombrowicz kicked off the school reading lists, which he wanted solely replaced with ultra-nationalist and Catholic authors; to his belief that Darwin totally sucks and that a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis rules above else when trying to understand the human story, the radical politician and his party members have shocked and awed Europe with their diabolical beliefs. One of the most recent and most ridiculous was that Tinky-Winky, from the popular children's Teletubbies show, was a closet homosexual infecting children's minds by portraying homosexual symbols (a violet handbag) in a sophisticated plot to convert the junior masses towards the hell-bound Kingdom of Gayness.

More nutty views of LPR
He alongside his deputies and followers are well-known as holding extreme views of hatred towards homosexuality. I deliberately have not called him homophobic here because I believe this belittles the extremist perspectives held and deeds carried out to repress people of minority sexual orientations by their cadres. As the re-initiator of the inter-war All Polish Youth brigade of thugs after the fall of Communism, Giertych attempted to start an organisation that would lead Poland back to a purported age of Polish patriotism and nationalism. The authoritarian and intolerant nature of this youth wing with its strong neo-nazi connections manifested through anti-semitic and xenophobic rhetoric and actions, and the political party that he started in 2001, LPR, which got 8% of the vote in general elections in that same year, have had their most successful period in the past couple of years with high profile posts in government.

Support from the Polish public
They got a similar percentage of votes in the 2005 elections, but their seat numbers fell from 38 to 34. Recent polls deem their performance in the upcoming October 21st (one date proposed so far) '07 elections to fall again, though they have a tendency to deceive pollsters and rapidly recruit an elderly mainly rural flock to vote for them, egged on by by the worst of the worst in the Catholic church dog collars.

How will the 5th Republic look?
One can only hope that they will get less than 5% support from the electorate which would rule them out from entering any potential right wing government. So the Fourth Republic may well be plummeting of a hill top where there is no safety net underneath. The 33% support which the centre-right Civic Platform strongly neo-liberal party may expect to gain in the forthcoming elections will probably see them as power-brokers for th Fifth Republic. Their position on sending a tenth contingent to Iraq in early 2008 will surely rest on potential economic gains. Whether they will ruffle U.S. feathers as regards the proposed U.S. missile Defence system is unlikely. But most importantly for ordinary Poles will be if they can prevent the ever-increasing emigration of the youngest and brightest from all parts of the country to countries that offer better wages and more comfortable lifestyles.

The fact that Poland in top of the list when it comes to attracting investment out of all the 31 EU countries may be a card they will use to try and repatriate the 2 million or so Poles who have left the country since their accession to the EU in May 2004. The coalition of Lefties and Democrats will remain in opposition again as they struggle to internally reform and root out endemic corruption that was their death-knell in the 2004 elections.

No matter how the elections turn out, one can expect a fierce contest of mud-slinging in the coming weeks as Poland's political elite fight it out to keep their too-well-paid jobs and positions of power and demean the reputations of any one who gets in the their way. Such is the daily business of the string-pullers in modern parliamentary democracies. Polish billboards can expect to see a new 'Boycott the Elections' campaign from anarchists in the coming weeks, but the State and commercial media colloboration with parliamentary pseudo-democrats and dire lack of active citizenship within Polish society will manage to achieve promoting another false alternative to govern above and not for the Polish people. Watch this space - the self-confessed neo-liberals are about to come to power in Poland and the wholesale privatisation of the country will be sped up 100-fold. I suppose it's good news for Irish capitalists hungry to get their hands on lucrative Polish real estate without bureaucratic interferences

Related Link: http://www.thenews.pl
author by C Murraypublication date Mon Aug 13, 2007 13:24author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Polish activists on the Women's Lists had signalled the oncoming repression of the
Right -wing Polish Government in November-December of 2006, with publications
and articles on the Human Rights implications of a sucession of Laws which began
with the tri-partite administration's attempts to force through an amendment to
article 38 of the Polish Constitution :- 'To protect life from the moment of conception'.
The health and human rights implications of the vote caused internal convulsions
and led to the first cabinet split, which saw Marek Jurek leaving the administration.

The failure in the vote coincided with the Alicija Tysiac case ruling from the EHCR
which stated that the Polish State had failed in it's legal obligation to the health and
safety of the mother in the case:-

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/81988

The newswire also covered the Anti-homosexual laws which were anti-human rights
and overtly interefered in the privacy rights of those teaching in the universities:-

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/81596

The Tysiac case is at :- http://www.indymedia.ie/articvle/81591

Indybay covered the 'Lustration Law', which was a new law designed to disenfranchise
the people who had been involved in the communist era or had had left wing sympathies
and there was an obit for Barbera Blida who was found shot dead in her bathroom during
a police search of her home under new repressive measures of investigation into
left-wing sympathisers.

In foreign policy terms The Polish adminstration was involved in talks with the US re Siting a
missile shield on Polish territory which has caused problems in both the EU and Russia.

author by Damien Moranpublication date Mon Aug 13, 2007 14:29author address author phone Report this post to the editors

is from www.feedshow.com

I tried to refer to this under the photo but obviously messed it up.

Related Link: http://peacenikhurler.blogspot.com/2007/07/poles-heed-over-heels-about-britain-and.html
author by hmmmmpublication date Mon Aug 13, 2007 15:37author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Do you believe that the elections announced are going to bring about a new constitution? I haven't seen any suggestion of that at all. Therefore the new government and hopefully new regime will still be the 4th republic.., anyway.

author by C Murraypublication date Mon Aug 13, 2007 17:51author address author phone Report this post to the editors

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/article/7636/04/1...1.php

The original call for help and protest letter from Polish Activist women:-
http://www.federa.org.pl/signatures

The Alicija Tysiac link keeps routing into the comments form .

author by Mothpublication date Wed Aug 15, 2007 10:19author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Please read the first paragraph of this link:- http://www.pnb.pl/

author by xpublication date Thu Sep 27, 2007 03:35author address author phone Report this post to the editors

" Therefore the new government and hopefully new regime will still be the 4th republic.., anyway. "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Polish_Republic

Fourth Polish Republic (pl. "IV Rzeczpospolita" or "IV RP"), project of moral revolution and politician changes which was made by Polish conservative philosopher Rafał Matyja in magazine "Nowe Państwo" in 1997. In Polish election 2005 "IV RP" was a politician slogan used by the Polish party Prawo i Sprawiedliwość.

According to PiS the current Third Polish Republic is a post-communist creation whose very foundations must be changed to create a truly democratic state free of its past.

Related Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Polish_Republic
author by Snap!publication date Sun Oct 21, 2007 11:51author address author phone Report this post to the editors

The Poles are going to the Polls today to vote on whether right-wing nationalism and
anti-commie church domination is preferable to free-market liberalism. Meantime Jose Socrates
(who threatened to torpedo the Reform treaty) will be winding up the talks which are happening
in Lisbon about Free market liberalism and it's sister right wing radicalism and nationalism.
Thats because governments are only concerned with control and profit and many have ignored
essentials like health infrastructure and National provision of education rights, so enamoured
are they of empty wealth models and corporatism spread to Europe through the US system.

The six basic parties who are centrally funded and supported by the State get to haggle
in Poland about the basics of lieing to their populations and using fear to connect to
federalisation while many ordinary people will just get on and ignore the rodashows.

author by C Murraypublication date Sun Oct 21, 2007 18:17author address author phone Report this post to the editors

The snap election in Poland is ongoing with most commentators saying that Tusk will win,
accusing the Twins of obession with communist era politics and a coalition
partner of mismanaging the Polish economy.[corruption issues]

Al Jazeera is covering on its English language service along with the Beeb and the broadsheets.
Tusk is seen as EU friendly and has promised troop withdrawal from Iraq.
The PiS Headed by the twins had worked with the LPR to bring about constitutional changes
on Right to life/Right to Choice issues by attempting to force a constitutional change to article
38 of the Polish Constitution, as well as introducing anti- homosexual and Lustration Laws.
One of the twins has been in Lisbon on the Treaty negotiations . The Treaty will get Parliamentary
ratifications alone in most member states and Poland's Snap election brings it neatly into
timing for the 2008 ratification deadline.

According to the beeb PiS was supported by Radio MaryJa:-
http://www.radiomaryja.pl/ which had prosecutors drop charges against it recently for anti-semitic
remarks and is held responsible for further rises in anti-semitism in Poland. The RC
church re-iterated non-interferences in electoral politics this morning by having a
letter read in the masses-which most of the population do attend.

http://spiegel.de/international/0,1518,413976,00.html

Many Poles continue to support the Twin's policies :-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7054912.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7052539.stm

Radio Maryja behind the Fences
Radio Maryja behind the Fences

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