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If someone wondered what was that PiS “juidicary reform” for, it becomes to be clear already: the judges have to rule along with the PiS outlines, the law becomes of secondary importance. The examples of judges being mobbed for issuing verdicts that do not meet PiS expectation start to have troubles.
Let’s look at the case of Mariusz Kamiński. During previous PiS government chief of the anti-corruption bureau, in 2015 found guilty of abuse of power – he used some illegal provocations against PiS political enemies. He was sentenced to three years in prison by the court of first instance, and then instantly pardoned by president Duda – illegally, as president cannot pardon someone before the final sentence has been reached. Now judge Wojciech Łączewski, who sentenced Kamiński, has been accused of breaching the state secrets, as in his justification of judgement he gave up names of some undercover agents. How the judge would know the names of undercover agents? It is simple, they were given in during the public hearing by Maciej Wąsik, Kamiński co-accused in the same case. But who cares, judge Łączewski needs to be shown his place, and since smear campaign by state controlled media and other provocations against him (such as ordering prostitutes to his flat or trying to frame him into some imaginary plot run by anti-PiS journalist) did not achieved anything, he will be treated with the full force of law.
Judge Łączewski is not only one, who gets into trouble for ruling against PiS expectation. Judge Dominik Czeszkiewicz of Suwałki faces disciplinary actions. His sins are:
– setting a distant date for interviewing an under-age witness (she has been interviewed on next day anyway);
– not educating himself (it has been shown, that some of his ruling from 4 years ago were overturned in the court of the higher instance).
In other words: bullshit. His real sin is that he acquitted opposition activists accusing of obstructing an opening of an exhibition: in March 2016 the exhibition about so called Anders Army – a Polish Army that fought during the war alongside Western Allies, mostly known for their heroism in battle of Monte Cassino. The exhibition was merely a pretext to give some airtime to Anna Maria Anders, who back then ran for Senate in supplementary elections, and since her only qualification is being a daughter of General Anders, PiS thought that this was a good idea to acquitant the voters with their candidate in such manner. Opposition activists protested loudly against turning cultural event into PiS candidate’s rally and judge Czeszkiewicz found their protest to be justified, which of course angered PiS. (Anna Anders made it to Senate, and you might remember her from last week’s piece).
But while in courts there might be some pressure on judges to adhere to PiS outlines, elsewhere state institutions keep to the letter of the law even too much. In Warsaw there was a peculiar situation: a street has been closed for the weekend for resurfacing work, but some drivers entered the area of the roadworks and parked their cars there, obstructing the works. The contractors asked municipal police to remove illegally parked cars, but the officers refused to take action, pointing out that there was no sign warning, that illegally parked cars might be towed away. Well, there wasn’t, you dafties, because the whole street was closed to traffic. The result can be seen here: the workers laid tarmac around the illegally parked cars, leaving the patches of unfinished work.
Incidentally, there usually are no problems to have even legally parked cars removed at the expense of their owner when Monthly Anniversary of Smoleńsk Crash is to happen, or where there is some mass event like Marathon run or Corpus Christi processions – such situation happened to my friend, and while his ticket was scrapped, he never managed to get his money for towing and parking back…
Probably municipal police needs some reform – just as Bureau for Protection of the Government (Biuro Ochrony Rządu – BOR) needed. For PiS it means one: to dismantle the institution and replace it with the new one, with more pompous name and its own people. And so, the BOR is having being replaced by SOP (Służba Ochrony Państwa – Service for the Protection of the State). It came as a surprise to everyone, that the bosses of newly created institution have decided to join BOR on it’s last day of existence, but mystery was soon unveiled: the BOR officers have right to business flat and the officers of SOP don’t. And those, who served in BOR, but never were allocated one, have right to financial compensation. So basically this one day of service in the institution that ceases to exists might be worth several thousands złoty.
“It’s enough if one does not steal” said Beata Szydło in her expose, promising to solve problems that were kept putting back due to lack of funds. Apparently someone in PiS have been stealing though, as the parents of the adult disabled children, that were protesting during Donald Tusk government, are protesting again. This caused some uncomfortable situation for President Duda, as the protested forced him to watch his own speech from 2015 on this very subject, pointing out his hypocrisy. One of disabled persons spoke with prime minister Morawiecki and told him right in his face, that Donald Tusk was managing better. It would not be that hard to beat Donald Tusk, who provided those parents with some minor raise to their benefits, but PiS has decided that celebrating centenary of our independence by placing a “musical benches”, where one would be able to use smartphone application to make this bench play patriotic song or speech of Józef Piłsudski, is more important… Those benches will come at the cost of 30 000 zł each…
But it is not that PiS does nothing to improve healthcare. For example inświętokrzyski district a new consultant for gynaecology and obstetrics has been appointed. A regular readers of this series might known him: it’s prof. Bogdan Chazan, known mostly for that he has been willingly delaying his patients medical tests to hide from her the fact, that she is to give birth to deformed fetus. By that, he made her carry her pregnancy over the cut-off point, after which legal termination is no longer possible, thus forcing her to give birth to the baby that would die in pain just a day or two later…
Apparently when PiS makes a step back it is only to regroup and do the same everywhere. Just days after the European Tribunal ruled that logging in Białowieża forests was illegal. While former environmental minister Jan Szyszko in his interview with Father Rydzyk’s media is searching for the people to blame for the damage done to the environment there (apparently he has no mirror in his house, as if he had one, he could see the biggest culprit while brushing his teeth in the morning), the plans to log in another important nature site have been unveiled. Environmentalists and academics for over two decades call for establishing another National Park in Puszcza Karpacka (and the idea is circulating since 1920!), but the proposed Turnicki Park Narodowy never seen the light. And it seems that it might be too late for that soon, as State Forests, deprived of their moneymaking machine in Białowieża Forest decided to make money on cutting old trees in here instead.
I guess it is just a matter of time before international institutions react (WWF considers this area to be one of the 200 most important nature sites in the world) and we will again hear about the foreign powers trying to interfere with Polish internal business. But if one listens to right wing media, then there is an unavoidable question: how the Western powers can be still so strong, if they are de facto fallen countries? Marcin Rola (who might be known to some of Britske Listy readers from this piece), ultra-right wing journalist, who runs his own internet television, recently has published a piece on Sweden. Since his channel has troubles with youtube, I failed to find the original source, but one blogger kept a copy of it here. In this piece he spoke with a Polish girl who lives in Sweden and claims that this country no longer exists due to influx of Muslims. Marcin Rola then starts his rants, in which he claims that “Poland, supported by the USA, should intervene in Sweden and Germans and use its army to free those lands from Islamist occupation”. There were some incoherences in his speech, for example I can’t really connect the dots between “Muslims are worse than Nazis” and the fact, that Western media are dominated by Jews who support this Islamist invasion, but maybe this is just some Zionist Jewish plan to destroy Europe I am not aware of.
It’s only good then, that we have US army on Polish soil. They provide much support, mostly boosting our road accident statistics. They even managed to set a tanker of water on fire!
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Last week we looked into what opposition has to offer. There has been new developments there as well. Firstly, yet another grassroots movement is breaking apart. The women behind #blackprotest, fighters for women’s rights, that made PiS to retract in steps and give up (at least for now) its plans to make abortion laws in Poland stricter, were communicating via Facebook on groups called “Dziewuchy Dziewuchom” (lassies for lassies). Recently they have been shocked to find that most of their local groups have been deleted on the account of breach of the intellectual property. It seems that administrators of the one of the biggest groups decided to secretly register the name “Dziewuchy Dziewuchom” as their trademark, and now claim that they had nothing to do with the movement, and that they were just “building their brand” and the discussion forum on Facebook was just an element of this brand building procedure. The rest of lassies are pretty annoyed, and no wonder, as this is not the first instance when the opposition movement was damaged by the greed of it’s leaders – it’s enough to mention the casus of KOD and it’s leader Mateusz Kijowski – after it has emerged that he was trying to make some money on the side of his activism, the compromised organisation never got back on it’s feet….
Sadly, it seems that the opposition does not have much to offer. Just after PO shocked everyone by placing former PiS MP as their candidate in oncoming local election (see last week’s piece), post-communist SLD decided to beat it by making Monika Jaruzelska her candidate. She is a daughter of former communist leader, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, and this name has been making the headlines recently in the context of PiS attempts to fight the communist regime (that came about 30 years too late). Their unjust law that deprives anyone who could be in any way called “a functionary of the previous regime” of their pensions or other benefits was not enough for them. Now they are willing to strip communists of their military ranks as well (which to me personally is an utter idiocy – do they really think, that all history books are going to be amended to show, that Martial Law in Poland was introduced by PRIVATE Jaruzelski?). No wonder, that Monika Jaruzelska got angered and wants to get into politics to defend her father’s memory, but what does she has to offer to a left wing voter? Recent interview in Gazeta Wyborcza shows, that very little indeed. She hardly seems to have opinion on any of current political matters, and the only strong statement she uttered is that she would like to hear the voice of the church more. Some people already see her as Magdalena Ogórek 2.0 and expect it to be yet another total failure for SLD. It seems that right wing voter has a wide choice of right wing and central parties trying to be like PiS, and the left wing voter has a choice between young social-democratic party “Razem” that struggles to get over 3% support in the polls and old left wing party that tries to be like PiS.
This piece was published in Britske Listy
Photo: MOs810 – via Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
