Presidential Ambitions

Head in the Stars

 It is not often that I get accused of being a PiS supported, but that was my wife's whimsical reaction when I commented on current situation in Poland with regards to the EU Presidency.


On 1st July Poland took over the six month presidency of the EU. In itself this is a hugely historic moment for Poland as it is the culmination of Poland's struggle to free itself from the shadow of World War Two and its communist past. Obviously the Polish government are proud of the achievement; yet, they in them selves have had little to do with this. It was of course Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki who begun the process by voicing the feeling of the Polish government with the formal application for membership being lodged in 1994 under Prime Minister Waldemar Pawlak thus Prime Minister Tusk's government have in fact done very little to further the process.

Given that that by 2011 the Polish Presendency of the EU was a given fact, it is perhaps starange that it gets so much media and governemnt attention. It wa upon remarking that it is in fact a distraction from the real 'issues' that my wife asked if I had become a PiS supporter as they had been saying exactly that. PiS (Law and Justice Party) are for those who don't know, the main opposition party in Poland. They are, to put it mildly, a bunch of lunatics led by an even more bizarre figure who invariably uses cheap tricks to gain attention. Does that mean I have become a lunatic? I hope not. However, buy instinctivley stateing the opposite of whatever the government line is, PiS have in fact hit the nail on the head.


The government have filled every available space to promote the presidency, while drawing attention away from more important matters. In doing so they have been aided by a general lack of knowledge of EU internal politics. This is, alas, not by any means a Polish condition; few EU citizens truly understand the nature of the beast that is the EU and thus they are easily swayed by scare politics or in this case overly positive politics. Why overly? Well to be truly honest the rotating presidency amounts to very little indeed.

The Presidency will come and go and little will change. That is perhaps the sad part. The presidency means an excuse for the government to put of vital reforms for another six months.

Robbing Peter to pay Paul

The EU has recently put pressure of Poland to ammend its deficit situation and most resonable people would agree that the pension and health insurance system in Poland is a mess. Take the health payments for example. I have a full time job where my employer pays full health and pension contributions. As part of this I am entitled to use any public hospital or doctor in the country. However, I recently opened a private company in order to take a few private students in the evenings. To do this I have to pay 237 złoty to ZUS (the health insurance office) for health insurance. Need I point out the bizzare nature of this? I can have one job and pay once, but if I choose to take more work, I must pay again. My private students do not bring much money and so most months most of my money goes to ZUS.

On the opposite side of the coin are farmers where one farmer pays 300 złoty every three months for everything: health insurance and pension. So I pay for a second unusable bed in hospital nearly the same amount as a farmer pays in three months for all his social care. If this meant that I had superior treatment by the health service, then all very well. Alas, I don't!

The obvious affect is that small businessmen like me are dissuaded from starring a business. Why should I operate legally if most of my money will disappear? This is a serious reason to stay in the grey economy. While PM Tusk argues with PIS about Smolensk (which of course is a serious issue) the economy is going down the toilet.

Is politics the new four-letter word?

It seems that politics has droped to such a low within the publics perception that politicians are doing everything to dissasociate themselves with their very bread and butter. At the moment it is election campaign time for the municipal elections in Poland and a recent series of billboards bear a bizzare slogan set of slogans. One for example has the slogan "Nie róbmy polityki. Budujmy bioska" which translates as "We don't do politics. We built football pitches." There are others along similar lines with versions saying : ... we build schools...we build bridges... etc. Well although this is all very well, and ofcourse every country needs a good infrastructure; should it be at the cost of politics?

We don't do politics. We build pitches.

This all sounds very familiar to anyone versed in mid 20th century Polish history. In the 1960's, when it was clear that the system was failing, the Party embarked on a program of building 1000 schools to celebrate 1000 years of Poland. A pure distraction; and my house is a result of this. The school and teachers' house (my house now) were opened in 1964 and closed in 1982 when it was finaly admitted that there was no need for a school in a village of 100 residents :) The question is are PO re-useing slogans from 1960s communist Poland?

You may ask what the problem is. Well, for a government and PM to base their campaign upon the principle of deneying their occupationand role in the country, we can asssume that their is a gigantic rift between the rulers and the ruled, so to speak. Only when politicians are able to stand tall and be proud will real politics start. In recent elections the turn-out has been very low ( 53,8% in 2007, an increase of 13,2% from 2005 ) and people have disengaged drom Warsaw. As I said before, roads and infrastructure are obviously important, yet peoples lives consist of more than just this and it is the politicians' jobs to nogotiate a path beween these complex issues. For example issues that need to be dealt with include pension and retirement laws (still based on a communist system) as well as health and medical insurance (ditto).

It is ofcourse easy to poke fun at an advert, and ofcourse that is all it is at the end of the day: an advert. It is not indivative per se of the political climate and attitudes in Warsaw. However, looking at the bigger picture, i would hazard a guess to say that it is somewhat close to the real picture.