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The PiS government has a hard time. It is criticized and boycotted at every opportunity. Literally whole pop-music scene boycotted one of the biggest music festival after PiS tried to interfere with it. Several people refused to accept medals and orders from president Duda and other PiS politicians. Amongst them, to everyone’s surprise, is Mariusz Błaszczak, minister of interior. He was awarded a medal for merits in fire prevention by Mariusz Błaszczak, minister of interior. After media enquired about this unusual situation, the ministry informed, that minister Błaszczak refused to accept this medal from himself. What a brave man, some people, like consul in Mexico, lost their jobs for refusing to accept medals (more: here)!
Luckily for everyone, minister managed to keep his job, despite refusing to accept a medal, or the fact, that for the year he did nothing to investigate the case of Igor Stachowiak, a young man from Wrocław tortured and murdered by the police after being detained for looking similar to a runaway criminal. Only after the reportage broadcasted by the TV station TVN24 on the first anniversary of Stachowiak’s death, minister Błaszczak sacked some of the responsible officers. But such things would propably never happen again. Now, when the new officers are sworn to duty, apart from the police badge, they receive a figurine of an angel and a police issue prayer book. That should propably ensure, that police officers will act more Christ like from now on.
This might be actually part of government-wide Catholic offensive, as the ministry of interior is not the only resort that turned out to Catholic church for help in performing it’s duties. Also Ministry of Foreign Affairs decided to promote Poland. And so our country will be promoted in Latin America by noone else but Black Madonna from Częstochowa. Some people are angry, but I personaly think this is bargain: for mere 101 000 of Polish zloty the Mother of God himself will be doing good PR for us! Try to get any popular celebrity for this price!
Of course Poland is not a theocracy yet, so we cannot promote it by religion only. But religious people in Poland have the same rights like every other citizen, so you should not be surprised to find that other projects, such as teaching the world about Poles saving Jews during Holocaust are awarded to father Tadeusz Rydzyk, who’s media emporium cashed in over half a milion for that project already. Those, who say that his organisation has no relevant qualification or experience to run such projests are just petty, little frustrated men.
Other success of Ministry of Foreign affairs is securing Poland’s temporary seat in UN security council. The fact, that Poland was the only candidate from our part of the world, and nobody objected to us getting there (because why should there? We had the same job during Stalinist period or just after Martial Law in 1982) is presented by the government as an enormous success. According to them, it should not only offset government defeat when it tried to prevent Donald Tusk from keeping his job as president of European council, but it can also lead to finally uncovering the truth about Smoleńsk plane crash. But PiS fascination with dead people is so important, that it cannot wait, so the Ministry is now acting to bring to Poland body of Karol Rzepecki, a Russian army officer who died in Turkey during one of many Russian-Turkish conflict in XIX century. He happened to be a grandfather of a Danuta “Inka” Śledzikówna, a young home army soldier who refused to give up arms after 8th of May 1945 and continued to fight against communst, for which she was sentenced to death and executed. Now she has been chosen to become an icon of the new Polish right-wing patriotism, therefore anything, even in a slightest way related to her, will be blown out of proportion and used for political gains and further radicalisation of the Polish young.
First results of right wing offensive in Polish schools could be already seen during annual sitting of “parliament of children and youth”, that traditionally takes place in Polish Sejm on 1st of June – International Children’s Day. Luckily, they were allowed to use parliamentary buildings, as they were in the past sprinkled with a holy water by a priest. Their collegues from a local footbal club in Kielce were not so lucky: they were not allowed to use their newly build dressing rooms for weeks, as they had to be sacred first. I guess such problem would not bother the child MP’s, as the children parliament was extremely right wing as never before. One could hope, that the mass puke of right wing extremism presented by young members of the parliament can be owed solely to tendentious choice of the candidates, but a praise those young people received in the Polish social media, with this one being the most acclaimed speech:
proves, that the situation is much worse than that.
If we believe Minister Błaszczak, the young MP would not have to wait long to see the European Union destroyed. Minister Błaszczak was in Brussels recently, and he was really scared to see, that Belgian streets are full of soldiers, armoured cars and tanks, apparently to defend European valued from refugees. Except that Belgian army has not even a single tank in stock. So perhaps it’s even worse than Minister Błaszczak thinks, and those tanks he saw belong to refugees and ISIS?
Luckily, Poland has defence minister, who is not afraid to think out of the box. Since our fleet of sumbarines urgently needs to be refreshed (currently Polish navy has one Soviet made sumbarine from 1980’s and a few of second hand Norwegian submarines from 1960’s), there were some talks about ordering the new ones together with German and Norwegian navies. But simple submarines are not enough for mighty Polish navy, therefore Minister Macierewicz announced, that Poland will build our own submarines and they will be fitted not only with torpedoes and rockets but also planes! Such ideas were tested all across the world from 1920 to 1940 and then abandoned, as impractical, but as the Polish proverb says “Wise people learn from mistakes of others” and we don’t have wise people in power: we have PiS. Therefore this is not the only unorthodox idea coming out from Ministry of Defense – the other recent news are that part time soldiers from newly created territorial army will be trained to tackle Specnaz and destroy tanks using hand-held weaponry. Obviously we need to do something about those tanks, as recently five Ukrainian tanks travelled across Poland without any control from Ministry of Defence on their way to military competition in Germany. MOD spokesperson informed, that there was no need, as the tanks were transported by a private company. Here you go Mr Putin, if you want to invade Poland, don’t try to force Polish borders with your heavy armoured vehicles: just put them on some low-loaders that are usually used to transport diggers and other heavy equipment…
Meanwhile president Duda has a hard time. The highest court ruled that he broke the law when he paroled his pal Mariusz Kamiński (more on him here) before he was finally convicted with prejudice. The ruling pointed out the obvious, that president can only parole a person, who was found guilty and “relieving the judicial system of the trouble”, as president Duda called it, is beyond president’s prerogatives. Presidential office answered with compiling a list of works by legal experts, that could be interpreted in a way that would justify presidential actions, which quickly backfired as some of the authors protested against using their work to justify breaking the constitution. The biggest blow to presidential legal experts came from grand-daughers of one of the quoted experts, who pointed out that the quoted book of his grandfather was written in 1959, and therefore obviously was referring to the legal system of the communist Poland, not the constitution from 1997.
The ruling of the Highest Court only strenghened attacks on judges by the PiS propagandist media, that for a long time now try to show them as the corrupt members of the ancient regime, plotting to overthrow legally ellected government. Luckily, PiS MP Krystyna Pawłowicz has a solution to this problem: such people should be taught democracy through the process of forced reeducation in concentration camps like in North Korea. Yes, seriously. This is what she said. During official sitting of the parliamentary commission. This is actually in line with the opinion of Minister of Higher Education, Jarosław Gowin, who said that “Government is like a group of commandos that should act as if it has been dropped on enemy territory”. But by enemy he did not meant anyone in particular but simply the reality. Well, if for PiS government reality is the thing they should fight against, then that explains a lot.
While government fight reality at the front line, Jarosław Kaczyński himself hides away from it in safety. As confirmed by the recent piece in Newsweek, he lives in a cocoon created by his assistants and has no contact with the outside world, as they cater for all of his needs: they feed him, they dress him, they drive him around in a tinted window limousine, and they even print out internet articles for him. That lives him much more time to dream about making Poland great again, and plot how to change the country into People’s Republic of Poland v. 2.0.
But of course going back to the past is not always a bad things. In Wolsztyn for example, there is last remaining steam engine shed in all of the European railways, and thanks to railway enthusiasts they were able to announce, that steam engines will once again work, pulling regular commuter trains. This is propably one of the few things that bring joy both to me and Jarosław Kaczyński. To me, because I am a true railway enthusiast. To him, because he is on record attacking Donald Tusk for purchasing a fleet of Pendolino bullet trains. According to Kaczyński, a world-renowned railway infrastructure expert, they are not suitable for Polish railways, and Polish trains should be pulled by Polish locomotives. I am sure that the view of a good, old Ol49 steam engine manufactured in Poland back when he was a little boy will bring a lot of joy to his face. It would probably also make environmental minister Jan Szyszko happy, as according to him Polish coal is the most environmentally friendly fuel ever! And he derserves some good news after all those commie-leftist militiant ecologists spoiled his fun by blocking harvesting machines operating in Białowieża forrest.
Meanwhile in culture: a former wife of a PiS MP Anna Kamińska, who recently proposed a law banning bachelors and divorced people from becoming MP’s, wrote a poem to her ex-husband and then read it life on one of the niche TV stations.
“Mariusz, you betrayed me. But I forgive you, in my humility, throwing away all my ambitions and my self-esteem (…). But who would forgive you betraying God? Mariusz, come back home (…) to your one and only wife!”.
Well, I think I have enough of right wing poetry for a while.
And then is, of course, Smoleńsk. Exhumations of the victim’s graves revealed, that in some cases parts of the bodies are placed in wrong coffins. Some claim, that this proves that there was an assasination, as during normal crash the bodies would not be torn to pieces that much, as could be proved by the example of a Polish F1 driver Robert Kubica, who crashed into a wall at high speed and came out of accident relatively unharmed. The others don’t care, as the fact, that they found someone’s else’s finger in the grave of their loved one gives them an opportunity to sue the state for yet another hefty financial compensation, claiming trauma and moral damages. Disgusting.
This piece was published in Britske Listy.
Photo: Paweł Kula via www.sejm.gov.pl (free to use).
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