It was the old British prime minister, Harold Wilson, who said ‘A week is a long time in politics’: he should have come to Poland.

It’s all been going off here.

Police raided the house of ex-construction minister in the previous SLD government, Barbara Blida, investigating allegations she had been involved in corruption when allocating building contracts. Blida went to the toilet, accompanied by a female police officer, when, somehow, she put a hand in a drawer in the bathroom, pulled out a gun and shot herself dead through the chest.

What had she been up to as minister of construction in that sleaze ridden, ex-communist government? How was she allowed to get hold of a gun when under police supervision? What was a gun doing in her bathroom in the first place?

Jurek and church

Only a few days ago, Marek Jurek announced, with a flourish, that he was resigning the powerful position of Speaker of Parliament, leaving the government and leaving the ruling Law and Justice party (see previous post)to set up his own party – the Polish Right.

Quite apart from the fact that Jurek’s Polish Right would not be ‘Right’ at all – it would be much the same as the current government: a conservative leftish party (a marriage made in hell) – we already have one of those nationalist-conservative grouping: the barmy League of Polish Families.

So the ‘right’ looked set to split and split again, and so split the ‘right’ vote in the process.

But now the talk is of Jurek rejoining Law and Justice. Maybe. But maybe not.

A week is a long time in the politics of Marek Jurek. But what has changed his mind and tempted him back with his old mates?

Cue – stage right – the entry of the good old Polish Catholic Church, which has been trying to mediate between Jurek and the Kaczynski government. Why? Because the church does not want further splintering of the rightwing (read ‘conservative-left) in Poland in case the real Left or secular liberals get in power.

That the Church thinks it has a role in Polish politics is a scandal. If Jurek does come back then I think quite a few Poles will vote in a way that will make the cardinals cry into their pulpits.

How to become exempt from lustration in Poland?

Become a Catholic.

I have had to go through the ‘auto-lustration’ process. Everyone who works in the media here, and born before 1972, has to sign a form saying that he, ''Is not aware or conscious of the fact that he worked for the Polish communist secret service.’

Me, a root vegetable from south London, a Polish communist spy?

I spent most of the 1980s half conscious in some university student bar near the Elephant and Castle.. So how would I know if, unaware to myself, the conscious half of my brain had been spying for the Polish communists, or any other communists, for that matter?

I signed this nonsense. I would have gotten in trouble, and my boss would have gotten in bigger trouble, if I had not. So I did.

But it appears that employees of anything to do with the Polish Catholic Church are exempt from the lustration process, because of the Concordat signed between the Vatican and the Polish state.

So the government thinks that I am a greater potential threat to Poland than some Polish Catholic university lecturer.

A week is not just a long time in Polish politics, it's a very weird week, as well.

A doctor has been accused of murder because his patient's family refused to bribe him.

Dr Miroslaw G – we have to use this silly name as he is under criminal investigation, but everyone knows who he is – a respected heart surgeon here, has been accused of taking bribes for preferential treatment on the national health service. No surprise there. It’s been going on since the old communist days.

But what Dr G has also been accused of is turning off the life support system of a post-op heart transplant patient, after the patients family refused to pay the good doctor a bribe. The patient died, as a result.

The doctor has also been charged with numerous other offences.

Bribing doctors used to be common in Poland. But attitudes to this sort of practice are changing, and not before time.

Less doctors these days are excepting, for instance, 1,000 dollars for jumping an operation waiting queue. But some will continue doing this until people stop offering them bribes in the first place.

But what kind of person would offer doctors a bribe, and so deprive more honest or poorer patients their place in the queue?

Well, there is a guy at work who regularly does this. In fact, he tries to maintain that it is ‘the only way’ to get decent treatment. Once, he was actually lecturing a fellow worker that it was almost his ‘moral duty’ to do so.

What sort of freak thinks like that?

The guy in question truly is a Polish 1980s dinosaur, who wreaks corruption from every pore in his body. But thankfully, he is widely reviled at work for this. Virtually everyone - apart from one elderly worker, now retired, who never knew any different from the commie days, when bribing really was the only way to get things done here – thinks the guy is a complete shit.

So Poles are becoming disgusted by those who give and receive bribes in hospitals and doctors surgeries. Hooray!

The guy at work, all the other bribers, and those who take them, have a hand in the culture that led to the death at the (alleged) hands of the doctor, Miroslaw G. There is blood on all their hands.

I hope they all get very sick, very soon.

More?
Sex required in trade for operation at Polish hospital, Polish Outlook

It’s a dismal time to love the ‘beautiful game’ in Poland, but potential remedies could kill off a vital part of the game.

Tomasz Kuszczak will be in goal for Manchester United today as the first pick goalkeeper is injured. There are a lot of good Polish soccer players playing in the British leagues, and they always seem to be popular with the fans.

And it’s not surprising all the talented players get out of the Polish game as soon as they can. Football here is in a sorry state.

Corruption runs through all levels of the game – 70 players, officials, managers are involved in criminal investigations. Things got so bad that in January the government stuck its boot in and suspended the Polish football association. FIFA reacted by warning the government to keep out of the internal affairs of the association as this breaks its rules on government interference in national football affairs.

Add to that the disgusting state of most grounds in Poland, a chronic lack of money and a hooligan problem that makes the current problems in Italy look like a Sunday picnic, and it all adds up to sporting disaster.

But what to do? Many think that FIFA should ban Polish clubs from international competitions for five years or so, as they did with English clubs in the late 1980s after successive hooligan trouble.

English clubs and the British government reacted to the ban by making far reaching changes to football stadiums and the structure of funding the leagues.

Both Italian and Polish football are studying the English example, which introduced often draconian controls over supporters – named tickets, CCTV cameras in every ground, all seating stadiums, etc.

Getting tough could kill off more than just hooliganism

There is much talk in the press at the moment about the Italian ‘ultras’ – which the Guardian, for instance, claims have been responsible for the violence inside and outside stadiums lately.

‘Italian clubs have sucked up to their hooligan element for years, but now they have no choice but to get tough.’

The ‘ultras’ have become synonymous in journalists’ minds with hooligans. But this seriously misunderstands the role of the ‘ulras’, which are not gangs of hooligans but unofficial supporters clubs which aim to keep alive football fans culture on the terraces. As spiked football columnist Duleep Allirajah writes this week:

If all you know about the ultras is what you’ve read in the newspapers, you might be forgiven for believing that they are some kind of hooligan mafiosi led by sinister capi (bosses). In reality they are little more than semi-official supporters’ clubs who make huge flags and banners, organise pre-match tifos or choreographies, run social clubs, arrange away travel, and produce merchandise. There are invariably some tifosi who enjoy the odd punch up but to use the word ‘ultra’ as a synonym for hooligan is just lazy journalism.

The worry is that if the Poles and Italians follow the English example they could risk robbing the stadiums of the intense atmosphere that they currently enjoy. Go to a game at Arsenal these days and you will experience an atmosphere about as exciting as a hospital waiting room. British stadiums have become as quiet as public library reading rooms.

Meanwhile the antics of Polish football fans and the atmosphere they create when the games are in play is often extraordinary. fans really are part of the game here, not just spectators.

So I hope that Poles and Italians do kick the corruption and hooliganism out of their stadiums, but leave us some of the atmosphere, please! Let’s not turn Legia Warszawa’s ground into a British one, full of prawn sandwich eaters who would be better off going to the theatre for their entertainment.

More?
Appro to nothing in particular, see this Youtube clip of the campest ref you wll ever see in your life!

...because it will fail to reduce the influence and size of the state.

In a perceptive article in Reason magazine - Is Liberalism Dead in Central Europe? - Marian Tupy reminds us, as this blog has done many times, that when the Western press labels members of the Polish government ‘right wing’, or even ‘far-right’, they are missing an important point:

‘Of the Central European countries—Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic—all but the Czech Republic are seeing the rise of politicians who combine “right-wing” attitudes toward public and private morality with “left-wing” ideas about economics. Demands for tax hikes, price controls, tighter labor regulations, and renationalization of privatized property mix freely with calls for a return to faith, traditional family values, and restrictions on sexual autonomy.

Polish PM Jaroslaw Kaczynski is not a central European version of Margaret Thatcher. If they met he would call her an economic ‘liberalizer’ (a dirty word in Polish government circles) while she would give him a sharp whack over the head with her handbag and accuse him of being a bit of a [whisper it] ‘socialist’.

And it’s the attachment that all the elements of the current governing coalition – PiS, LPR, Samoobrona – have to maintaining the state as central to their redistributive, protectionist economic agenda that will limit any success in the Kaczynski’s central platform: to rid Poland of the corruption that has taken hold since the fall of communism.

It’s telling that there hasn’t been a big backlash against liberal reformers in Estonia, the country that has gone furthest in the transition from communism to free markets. In their Baltic outpost miles to the east of Central Europe, the Estonians have greatly reduced the size and scope of government and, as a result, limited corruption as well.

From Tupy’s perspective any battle against corruption and sleaze is doomed if they do not reduce the size and role of the state.

I would also add that to seriously put a dent in Polish corruption the government must also seriously tackle the connection between the political class and the public sector.

But since taking power PiS has passed laws that actually make it easier to get rid of top civil and public servants, only to be replaced, of course, with functionaries more amenable to their political outlook and project.

Old boys’ networks are replaced by New Boys’ networks, and the opportunity for corruption and nepotism is obvious, tempting, irresistible.

Samoobrona lawmaker (law breaker) Renata Beger, has been convicted of falsifying her electoral sponsorship list.

She made up 1700 names out of thin air, apparently. The signatures were hand written, so she must have been up all night, poor love.

She has received a two year suspended sentence for her trouble.

All rather embarrassing for her party, Samoobrona, which has led the crusade against political corruption.

Renata first came to attention when she was on the special parliamentary commission looking into the ‘Rywingate affair’, a tale of high corruption during the previous SLD government.

In an interview to a woman’s magazine at the time, she confessed to finding her boss, Adnrzej Lepper a bit sexy (?) but also admitting that she was a very amorous person herself, saying that she had ‘kurwiki in her eyes’ – an extraordinary expression which could be translated as ‘the look of a prostitute in her eyes’.

Gulp!

But dear Renata has inspired this blog to start its own political party – the Polish Pro Corruption Party (PPCP). Renata can be our president (if she promises not to give me any of that kurwiki nonsense!).

The PPCP will stand in the next Euro elections. We think Brussels is not corrupt enough and could learn a few tricks from Poland.

PPCP doesn’t mind if we haven’t got any support as we’ll just make up our signatures anyway.

We welcome backhanders and back scratching. Our accountant will bribe himself to falsify the accounts.

Our election slogan will be: VOTE EARLY, VOTE OFTEN!!!

Corruption watchdog, Transparency International, says that Poland has not got any less corrupt since joining the European Union last year.

From a survey based on responses from businesspeople, out of over 150 countries examined Poland ranks 70th least corrupt in the world (three places down on last year), but the most corrupt out of the 25 nations that make up the EU.

According to the report, Greece, Italy, the Czech Republic and Poland have performed relatively poorly in the last 12 months and "show little or no sign of improvement".

The report will surprise nobody, of course. The two election campaigns this autumn – for parliament and president – have been dominated by rightwing parties promising to clean Poland up after 4 years of rule by the ex-communist, SLD government. The Law and Justice and League of Polish Families have been calling for a complete clean sweep of government and civil service to get rid of corrupt, ‘communist’ elements.

Out of the post-communist countries to join the EU in May, 2004, Estonia is the least dodgy, says TI – influenced, they say, by the Nordic culture of strong civic society and good governmance.

Cheating in school and university becomes an election issue.

The heavyweight UK Economist (Oct 4) magazine reports that thousands of pens that write with invisible ink, and have a small ultra-violet light at the end with which the ink can be read – are flying off the shelves of stationary stores in Poland. It’s no coincidence that the new academic year has started. The pens are ideal to cheat in exams with.

Cheating at school in Poland is endemic. Anyone who has worked in the education system here (as I have done) will tell you that it is not just the thick students that do it. They defend themselves by claiming that it is ‘part of our culture’, and was a way of ‘resisting’ the communist educationalists.

And it’s not just the students who are to blame. Teachers have been turning a blind eye to this nonsense for generations.

Things are getting better. The matura school-leaving exam is now being marked by external examiners, so the temptation for teachers to tweak the grades has gone.

But teachers are still in denial about cheating in class. After a particularly nasty encounter with lecturers at Warsaw University when I was promoting the magazine I used to work for, we decided to do something about it, and run a series of articles about the subject (see Honesty in the classroom?). And then we sat back and waited for the letters and emails to start coming in.

In the end we received just one letter.

The Law and Justice Party(PiS) – which stands on a platform of tackling corruption in public life, has pointed out the obvious: corruption and cheating in schools are linked. In the market square in Krakow, reports the Economist, PiS staged recently a little drama to illustrate the point: “Six ‘students’ struggle to complete their final exam paper. One by one, they are caught cheating, and forced to stand up, showing their masks: well-known corrupt politicians and businessmen.”

The article also points out that the word for cheating in Poland – sciaganie – suggests ingenuity, not dishonesty. “Only when Poles find a pejorative term will this dubious habit loose its moral immunity,” concludes the magazine