If Kazik, who’s song was removed from the first place in the charts as it criticized Jarosław Kaczyński’s contempt to the social distancing measures, wanted to write some new stanzas, he would not be short of material.
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“Your pain is better than mine” could be followed by:
– your event is better than mine:
Police are very keen to hand out fines to people who are not observing the rules, yet some celebrations in Wrocław, when acting chief of the police met with approx 100 people was deemed to be not in breach of the law.
– your concert is better than mine:
TVP broadcasted a concert on Mother’s Day (which, in Poland, falls on 26th of May). Not only social distancing was not observed on the stage, but the concert was played with live audience.
– your crowd is better than mine:
New rules are to make spontaneous gathering nearly impossible – only those registered in advance can go ahead, provided that there is no more than 150 people and social distancing is observed. So sorry, protesters, not now. But that, of course, does not apply to President Duda, who travels all over Poland welcomed by crowds of his followers (and he lies to them, saying that “he gives them money, and the local governments take them away by putting the refuse collection prices up” ignoring the fact that they were forced to do so by the changes introduced by the government).
– your table is better than mine
Prime minister Morawiecki was observed eating in the restaurant with some co-workers, despite the fact that one is only allowed to sit at the same table with the members of the same household (poor Morawiecki, according to his spokesman he was not aware of the rules he himself introduced)
– your tests are better than mine:
The government has been purchasing overpriced imported COVID-19 tests from a company run by businessmen connected to PiS instead of ordering much cheaper ones made in Poland.
– your business projects are better than mine:
Government just gave land worth 56 mln zł to the church, despite the fact, that it was deemed illegal by the previous government. The church with its business partner is planning to build a luxury hotel there.
– your movie about paedophilia is better than mine:
Jacek Kurski (who seems to be back in charge in TVP) wrote a tweet in which he announced TVP’s victory in a duel of two paedophilia movies, as the one aied by TVP was seen by more people than the one aired by TVN.
But hey, let’s stop here. What two movies about paedophilia? Well, to counterbalance Tomasz Sekielski movie about how the church and state protect paedophile priests (here) TVP contracted compromised journalist Sylwester Latkowski to make a movie about paedophilia amongst celebrities. Unlike Sekielski well-grounded accusations, this document was worthless. It’s basically a retelling of an old story with attempts to suggest, that popular celebrities well known for criticizing the government were involved in the proceder, but the only thing he was able to prove is that they visited the night club in which paedophiles operated. After it aired, a lector who voiced testimonies of the victims protested, saying that she was misled on what the movie will be about. Actor Borys Szyc published a whole chat record with Latkowski, who for months pestered him to give him “something” or to admit that Szyc is a paedophile himself.
And while Kurski’s claim that Latkowski’s movie was seen by more people is simply rubbish (Sekielski published his on Youtube, where it already has been seen more than 7 million times), the TVP movie indeed won something: minister Ziobro instantly organized team of investigators to focus on the case (which is, by the way, known since at least 2015 thanks to an investigative work of Gazeta Wyborcza’s reporters) and prosecution is already investigating it. So that case will be now investigated TWICE, while there is still no investigation into the cases described even in the previous Sekielski’s movie.
But it is not that the state is not interested in investigations. Up to 1278 judges, who signed a letter to OSCE in which they asked that organization to monitor elections PiS planned on 10th of May can now face disciplinary action. And it might be that they were right that something was in the making. It has emerged, that the Polish Post ordered 3 millions more voting ballots than needed. The whole project of organizing elections that never happened has cost this institution nearly 70 000 000 zł, but Jacek Sasin, who was responsible for organizing those illegal elections still claims, that it’s the opposition that has to take responsibility for his failures.
We probably are far from seeing the end of the money wasted by Jacek Sasin, as his ministry just announced that they are going to establish state-owned food product holding that would include the whole chain – from the farms to the retail shops selling food to the public.
Jacek Sasin is becoming now one of the two most discredited government ministers, along with Health Minister Łukasz Szumowski. At the beginning of the pandemic the latter was considered by many a hero, commonly seen as one decent person in PiS. Now, when all his shady businesses came public and it is clear to everyone but the most hardcore PiS fanatics, that government is only thinking about itself, the attitude towards him changed dramatically. Suddenly someone who buys overpriced respirators from some shady arms dealer is no longer nation’s favourite. Luckily for him, the law ensuring impunity for those, who were acting illegally “in public interest during pandemics” has been signed by the president.
According to many press reports, the whole struggle with the pandemics rests in large part on the shoulders of volunteers and crowdfunding actions. According to the reportage by Oko.press, not only the hospitals rely on the PPE produced by a self-organized network of volunteers, but they have to be delivered in the conspiracy, as the government would sooner see doctors working without face shields and face masks that admit, that it is unable to provide those basic items. Also, the nurse, who was sacked from her job in March for alarming that her hospital lacks basic PPE, has been offered her job back, on the condition that she’ll announce that she was not telling the truth and refrain from mentioning that topic ever again.
But don’t worry, the pandemic won’t be a problem for much longer. In Wierzbica, in eastern Poland, they have raised a Cross of Caravaca, which will protect our nation from the plague.
First miracles are already visible. PiS was able to cooperate with others and the new laws on public aid for the companies have been enriched by a correction proposed by an opposition MP Adrian Zandberg. The CEO’s of the companies that apply for government funds will have to cut their salaries to no more than 4 average salaries for a year.And then police officers from Wrocław refused to go to Warsaw to fight with the anti-government protesters – 80 of them called in sick.
Of course, the power of this miraculous cross is not big enough to force Antoni Macierewicz to release his long-overdue report of the Smoleńsk crash, so he is now being sued for hiding the crucial information, as he many times accused Radek Sikorski, Donald Tusk and former defence minister Tomasz Siemioniak of assassinating the president, yet still refuse to release the proof.
But another very important report has been released. The Polish League Against Defamation, an NGO associated with the government, finished an audit of streaming platforms. They watched 557 movies to find, that only 3% of them mentioned Poland in any way. Gosh, I want that job, being paid for binge-watching movies on Netflix…
Apart from that, the cultural war in Poland focuses on pushing the country towards religious dictature. Sometimes the church still loses some minor battles – like when the pilgrimage to Częstochowa organized with disregard to social distancing rules has been disbanded by the police. But apart from that everything is going smoothly:
– the new Minister of Science and Higher education wrote a letter to the academics, in which he carried an important message in 12 words and further 265 speak about pope John Paul II being a warrant of academic freedoms.
– Minister of Agriculture also draws his inspirations from the same source. He proposed that people who are unemployed due to pandemic are to pick fruits and vegetables at the farms. How he came to that idea? He recalled that John Paul II taught us “you should help others carry their weights”.
– Rafał Trzaskowski, the opposition candidate in oncoming (I hope!) presidential election has been grilled by TVP reported demanded explanation why he hasn’t sent his son to the first communion as if it was mandatory or something…
– an Ultra-catholic activist who said, that gay people want to be able to adopt children so they can “molest and rape them” has walked free from the court, as people who protested against her words were “unable to prove that they are homosexual” and thus they could not be offended.
– Up to now, the law was that if the doctor refuses to perform legal abortion due to his religious beliefs, the hospital in which he was employed was obliged to direct the women to a place when the procedure will be performed. Thanks to the newest changes to the law, inspired by ultra-Catholic organisation Ordo Iuris, this will no longer be the case, and the women is left on her own.
– students who dared to protests against homophobic and anti-scientific views presented by one of their lecturers are now being tormented with hours of interrogations by the police accompanied by lawyers from Ordo Iuris.
– thanks to the same organization, a manager in Ikea, who sacked a man who on the company’s forum used quotes from the bible to justify killing homosexuals, is now accused of discriminating on the ground of religion.
Ordo Iuris has been accused by some of being an organization sponsored by Kremlin. Of which nobody would probably know if not for the fact, that Marta Lempart, one of the leaders of the women protests, has been ordered by the court to stop spreading that information. Therefore, to avoid being sued as well, I want to make it clear in order to avoid any misinterpretation:
ORDO IURIS IS A FUNDAMENTALIST ORGANIZATION SPONSORED BY KREMLIN
is an information that should not be spread by Marta Lempart.
This piece was written for Britské Listy
Ordo Iuris Logo: Sonia Czechowicz (CC 4.0 via Wikipedia)
