Legal and constitutional calamities strike again

Freedom of speech or abusive tripe?

I have, as regular readers will hopefully remember, commented several
times on this blog upon the topic of the Polish constitution; mostly unfortunately in a critical manner. Well, actions conducted by the Polish Internal Security Agency (ABW) on Wednesday morning (18.5.11) at 6 in the morning have alas risen the position of the Polish President once again into controversy.

After a warrant issued by the prosecutor's office ABW agents and police spend three hours searching the flat of 25-year-old student Robert Frycz, leaving with his laptop and various memory sticks/disks. Bizarrely enough Frycz's lawyer Bartosz Kowalski says that Frycz was not a suspect: "(What is) Very important in this case is the fact that Robert is not Frycz a suspect." Kowalski differentiated Frucz from his equipment stating that the prosecutor's order had been to seize the
equipment used to mange and update the website : AntyKomor.pl which has
President Komorowski as its target.

According to article 135 of the criminal code any act of public insult of the President is punishable by unto three years in prison. The constitutionality of this article has already been challenged in the case of the late President Lech Kaczyński sueing ex-President Lech Walesa for calling him a prat in the newspaper "Rzeczpospolita". The constitutional tribunal is due to deliver its verdict shortly and this will hopefully be a final nail in the coffin for this ill conceived law. There are alas many similar laws which journalist Grzegorz Sroczyński lists in Gazzetta Wyborcza which go against the norms of freedom of
speech.Thankfully the president's office has come out against the law with Secretary of State in the President's Office, Sławomir Nowak, stateing to the TVN24 news agency that he did "not accept and did not like the use of security agency to police the internet and that if thus case was legal then there is a problem with the law and that it should be changed."

Regardless of the ins and outs of it, whether Frycz was genuinely insultive or 'satirical' as he claims, the case highlights a major problem with the legal system and has ramifications beyond Poland's boarders. Poland is at the forefront of democratic efforts to help Belarus change its system of government and 'rejoin' Europe. In Belarus, as in any other dictatorial regime, police raids and confiscation of materials are regular tactics used to intimidate opposition members. It therefore does not bode well for Poland's credentials as a critical
observer.

Whether this is a left over from Poland's communist past is hard to say; there are many aspects of Polish day-to-day life that appear strange to myself, an outsider, yet go often unquestioned by most Poles (see posts on Ids etc). However, an unquestioning legal apparatus which protects the 'sacred' status of the political apparatus is a long way from the true idea of a liberal democracy which most Poles envisaged in 1989.

Presdiential Security

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Administration is currently mulling over a rather interesting idea. In order to ensure security for Poland's presidency of the EU in the second half of the year it is considering banning virtually every type of conceivable weapon.

All very well and good you may thing; yet lets have a look at this list: The Law on arms and ammunition, which is the basis to issue the regulation, includes not only regulation firearms. It is also mentioned in her air-guns, CS GAS, and tools and equipment, whose use could threaten life or health. This last category includes crossbows, stun guns and melee weapons (according to the law: Blades  hidden in objects like guns, brass knuckles and some types of clubs, including baseball bats).

In essense then the following is Public Enemy Number One:

A similar law as put in place in Warsaw during the funeral of President Kaczyński  when Warsaw was placed under such a restriction. Basically it was illegal to enter enter public placed in Warsaw with any of the proscribed instruments. The law as suggested for the presidency will cover certain cities during specific time periods. Once again, all very well and good.

It seems logical to ban guys with guns from being in the same city as visiting dignities. Yet as revealed by various news agencies it will also affect a baseball team travelling to a match.

Commentary?  Well, in my view this is all a tad over the top and a blanket solution to a specific problem. It is akin to the recent ruling in which Lech Poznan and Legia Warsaw had to play their games behind closed doors due to football hooliganism. By targeting all possible weapons the government are in fact breaking one of the cardinal rules of security: Security has to make sense.

If the security measures cause more negative effects than the conceivable negative effects that would be apparent through a lack of the measure, then the security measure defeats its self. For example, during the 'troubles' in Northern Ireland shoppers were under a continuous bomb threat; yet security had to allow people to actually move around and shop else the terrorists had to all extents and purposes one.

Returning to Poland, rather than employing intelligence assets to target prospectively specific threats, the government has chosen to employ a draconian method of civil control. In affect it has curtailed the normal rights of its citizens in order to play the 'tough on security card'.

systeMY / systemUS

This is just a short pre-posting in way of a form of advertising. On Friday 20th at 18.00 in Lódź is the grand opening of the much awaited systeMY / systemUS exhibition at Lódź Culture House's 'Galeria Imaginarium' (ul. Traugutta 18).

The exhibition is curated by Mariusz Sołtysik and features four American artists, one Irish artist and one Polish artist. Importantly for me, the Polish one is me wife Ela Wysakowsk-Walters (see Pocket Dictator) hence my pre-posting.

I will of course post a full report after the opening. The exhibition will be open for a further month and so please take the time out to take a look :)