As president Duda promised, the COVID curve has flattened in the middle of October. And so the lifes go back to normal. A rosary march took place in Warsaw, during which its participants were praying to God to “compensate him for profanations and insults caused by followers of neo-marcists LGBT ideology”. In Wadowice there was a big musical event to commemorate the Pope… no, not THAT, pope, THE pope, John Paul II. The work on the animal’s right bill continues in Senate – and PiS Senators finally understood why their party was so keen to give all those cosy jobs to their families: those can be now use as the leverage by the party leadership. The families simply hear “if your uncle/husband won’t vote as we tell him, you are out of this job”.
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The new government is also beginning to work – for example by illegally replacing members of the Scientific Council of the Roztoczański National Park where academics and environmentalists had to give their seats to a teologist and one of managers of State Forests – the very man responsible for illegal chopping of ancient trees in Białowieża Forest. And another government minister gave some boring speech, doesn’t matter what it was, but look in the background:
Do you have a framed picture of your boss on display in your office as well? And if you look closer, you’ll see that the pope (the proper one!) is there as well! I see this man has some future ahead of him!
Meanwhile Kaczyński himself gave an interview for pro-government magazine, in which he compared Polish relations with the EU with the Polish relations with USSR, and he concluded, that the latter were much better for us. Is then probably even bigger success, that Poland managed to block an important document regulating relations between EU and Africa. Why? Because it spoke about gender equality. And Gender is bad, remember? The discussion was hard, because Polish prime minister was not present. Initially he was to be represented by Andrej Babiš, but he doesn’t really seemed to care, so while he left, Poland was represented by Viktor Orbán who understands Poland better. And so, as the result, instead of “gender equality”, document says “non-discrimination and equality for everyone”.
And why Morawiecki was not present in Brussels? Well… The COVID-19 curve might be flattened, but that flat plane is almost vertical… So the numbers grow like crazy, and Morawiecki joined number of government ministers (and several bishops!) who were quarantined. Which is a bit confusing, as he left the quarantine pretty fast. But not as confusing as the sickness of former health minister Szumowski, who first was sick, then, after being photographed out shopping claimed, that he is not sick any more, and then ended up in hospital, where he has to be provided with oxygen.
The Coronavirus is on the rise, and the health service has already collapsed. The ambulances queue for hours outside hospitals. Other drive in circles for hours in desperate attempts to offload their patients to some hospital that agrees to take him or her despite having no spaces left. The recordings published by the TVN show desperation of the crews and dispatchers. It all started when kids came back to schools – as it was predicted by everyone. But PiS was not too worried when first teachers started to die. “Of course it’s a great tragedy, but let’s remember that teachers die in car crashes as well” – said one of the ministers (but somehow if a politician dies in a plane crash, then it’s the greatest tragedy ever, and the whole cult of Smoleńsk crash victims (but only those from PiS) has to be designed, right?). But finally even government realised, that spending summer on fighting LBGT disease was perhaps not the smartest thing to do when the real one is still so great danger, so they begin hysterical attempts to do something. So far they decided to turn National Stadion into a makeshift hospital. The medical staff that will work with COVID-19 patients is to be paid double rates. All doctors and medical staff – even those not practising or who failed exams, as well as medical students – will be drafted to work, which might not be easy, since the government just works on introducing draconian punishments for medical errors (this is private vendetta of minister Ziobro, who blames doctors for death of his father), so they now are to make an exception for those, who work on COVID-19. The fact that minister Sasin just recently blamed “lazy doctors” for the problems in the health service also didn’t worked well with healt professionals, so that narratotion had also to be changed. So who is to blame for the chaos in the health service now? Well, you guessed it: Donald Tusk and his government. Instead of reporting on the current situation, TVP’s message is “maybe now it’s bad, but just remember how bad it was under Tusk” so if you see footage of crowded hospitals there, it is most likely archival footage from 2014 or before.
Meanwhile the government has a huge problem. Their propaganda was telling everyone that “virus is in decline and there is nothing to be afraid off”. Their major competition – right wing Konfederacja – presents openly anti-mask and anti-lockdown stance and their own government ministers openly disregard any safety rules, so if they tried to introduce another lockdown the public opposition to it might be too much. As a result, they just try some half measures. They closed fitness clubs for example, but allowed churches to remain open. Some of them reopened next day as “churches of healthy body” or fitness equipment rental places, where, at small fee, you can test the equipment on the stop… Poles are quite ingenious when it comes to finding loopholes.
They government tried to lock up Roman Giertych as well. He used to be a leader of Liga Polskich Rodzin, a right wing party that was in coalition in PiS during previous government of Kaczyński back in 2005-2007. Since there Giertych left politics and opened his law practice, where he quickly acquired several high flying customers, including some enemies of PiS, such as who accuses Kaczyński of cheating him out of the business deal (see more here). His short and witty “open letters” on his social media, in which he very accurately and painfully mocks and criticises PiS also became very popular. So he had to be taken care of.
During the arrest he went to the toilet, escorted by an agent, and after that he fell ill and had to be taken away in an ambulance. He was still unconscious next day, when the prosecutors have read him his charges, so his lawyer said that he wasn’t charged properly. Prosecutors claim it was al right, because he is not really sick and he was simulating. The court refused to arrest him, but the prosecutors still placed 5 000 000 zł of bail and banned him from practising as a advocate (which comes very handy to PiS, as he was supposed to be in court representing Leszek Czarnecki, who claims charges against him are made-up and the whole thing is just political). Meanwhile 5 other people accused of the same crime (the people who were supposed to commit the actual crime Giertych was allegedly facilitating) were released by court with no charges on bail. The very lawyery-diplomatic words of the judge can be simply translated as “Don’t be silly, prosecutors, there is nothing in there”.
Giertych’s lawyer says he got phone call in which someone threatened him with death and Giertych’s family suspects that agent, who was with him in the toilet, tried to poison him. Doctors seem to consider this possibility as well, as they cannot see the reason behind his illness. And the sad thing is, that those accusations are not so crazy, as one can think. I don’t want to draw any conclusions, but let’s put some facts together:
We have to remember the case of Barbara Blida, a left wing politician, who was also accused of some white collar crimes by Zbigniew Ziobro’s crew back in 2007. She was later cleared of all suspicion, but it was too late for her, as during her arrest she asked to go to the toilet, and then died of the gunshot. Allegedly she committed suicide, but the circumstances of her death remain unclear.
One has also to remember that Andrzej Lepper, former leader of Samoobrona, another PiS’ coalition party from 2005-2007 has also been found dead under mysterious circumstances. He was claiming that he is in possession of some documents that could bring Kaczyński down. Two lawyers working with him, with whom he was known to deposit important documents convieniently died soon after him.
Last but not least – Zbigniew Stonoga, a scandalist, failed politician and a fierce enemy of PiS claimed some time ago, that Lepper’s death was in fact murder, and that Giertych might know who is behind it. I am writing those words with disbelief, as it sounds more like a plot of House of the Cards or something, but it just happened that as I do, Zbigniew Stonoga (who published some compromising materials on PiS politicians before) turned up in Norway and announced that he is going to claim political asylum…
One is sure: the arrest of Giertych was not made with the observance of procedures at all. The National Council of Attorneys issued a protest, pointing out that a search in the home of an advocate who on the next day is supposed to represent his client in highly politicized case in court might lead to breach of client-lawyer confidentiality. So in any way PiS not only took away Leszek Czarnecki’s attorney, but might also now be aware about their line of defence…
Anyway, this was some heavy stuff, so let’s end on some good news. At least for Czech readers. As thanks to PiS you just got a world-class expert working for you. Alicja Knast was just found to be the best candidate to run Czech National Gallery in Prague. This world-known museum expert took over Silesian Museum in Katowice in 2014 and she made a great success of it, only to be sacked earlier this year under the pretext that the financial audit showed some minor financial discrepancies. The court has later deemed termination of her employment illegal. So what was it really about? Could it be because of the fact, that she refused for her museum to host a conference as she suspected that it was, in fact, part of Mateusz Morawiecki’s election campaign?
So with PiS pushing the experts out, what Poland is left with? Recently the Ministry of Culture awarded several grants to artists to promote Polish culture online. Let’s see what is considered to be an elite of Polish culture now: here is for example a song promoting road safety to children:
Taxpayer’s money well spent! If you want to celebrate this success, you can learn this patriotic dance:
This lady surely tries hard, I think she deserves a grant next year.
