September 2010 Letter from Zwakow-Suble

Our preoccupation with the antics of the nationalistic extremists and the divisive behaviour of Jaroslaw Kaczynski is still being fed by their increasingly provocative behaviour. A couple of days ago Kaczynski led a torchlight procession to the still-in-place wooden cross behind its concrete barriers outside the presidential palace in Warsaw. There he gave what was little short of an incitement to hatred speech(MPs are immune from prosecution for this) saying that Poland was now ‘a condominium of Germany and Russia’, that the new president was illegally elected by means of cooking the results, that he and Tusk the Prime Minister should ‘disappear’ and that they were responsible for the Smolensk disaster along with the Russians because his brother had to arrange his own flight instead of joining the official event to commemorate the Katyn massacre. A fortnight earlier on 31 August, he was publically embarrassed when Lech Walesa refused to attend the 30th Anniversary commemoration of the Solidarity strike. Walesa considers the current incarnation of Solidarity as too political, dominated as it is by PiS and anti-liberal members. “I don’t intend to attend. We struggled and we achieved democracy. So then I proposed that Solidarity finishes with politics,” he said. “But it continues to be political, instead of occupying itself with trade union issues.” One of the original Solidarity women signatories of the ‘round table agreement’ (at that time a tram-driver) that led to the first semi-open election in 1980 went up to the conference stage, took to the microphone and lambasted Jaroslaw (not a signatory) for his recent provocative behaviour and expressed her dismay at his colleagues in the audience who had heckled the Prime Minister as he spoke at the event.

Fortunately splits are beginning to appear in the PiS party of Kaczynski as the more reasonable members see the lurch into extremism as potentially alienating the younger electorate in particular.

Marek Migalski, a Law and Justice MEP, criticised the party leader for being too combative and warning him that his presence as leader could be damaging PiS’s election prospects. “Without you we won’t survive, [yet] but with you we won’t win,” wrote the MEP in a rare and public sign of discontent with the Mr Kaczynski, who has long dominated the party. His aggressive and abrasive politics that have long been a hallmark of PiS have now, for some in the party, become a liability rather than a bonus. Political commentators have said that PiS could benefit from a more moderate face to present it as a party of consensus and conciliation. Reformists in PiS ranks are also aware of the need to expand its pool of voters. In the past Mr Kaczynski has appealed to a strong core of older and conservative voters, often located in rural areas. While this has provided PiS with a bedrock of support, it has also meant the party has struggled to attract new and younger voters. But sources close to PiS claim that Mr Kaczynski plans to remain in control, opting for a long-term strategy. Writing off next year’s elections as unwinnable he will, apparently, focus on winning those in six years’ time.

He has begun to remove from their responsibilities a few of these dissenting voices, including the lady who master-minded his ‘makeover’ as a consensus builder during the presidential election campaign that quickly evaporated. Dorota sees worrying signs of demagogic potential and a cult of Kaczynski who is claiming that PiS and the church must ‘win back Poland’ at all costs. He is courting the extremists and she fears that the threatening language that he is using may encourage hotheads to dangerous levels. It is to be hoped that the economy remains reasonably robust for some time for large-scale unemployment could exacerbate the divisions that are being fomented in the country by this increasingly outrageous political behaviour.

In a similar vein that exposes the intolerant illiberal values of many still in this country, the following report appeared in the New Warsaw Express recently:

A gay rights group has slammed a school text book for suggesting that homosexuality is an illness that can be cured. Intended for high-school pupils, the book, entitled “On the Road to Adulthood”, drew criticism from Association of Diversity owing to its apparent old-fashioned and Catholic view on homosexuality. “(The book) remains silent on the problems of homophobia and discrimination and presents the theory that homosexuality is something one can reject and that one can return to ‘normality’,” said Przemek Szczeplocki, a spokesman from the association. “This kind of attitude deepens the lack of acceptance for gays, lesbians and bisexuals and perpetuates a belief that some sexual orientations are weird, and this is hurtful,” he said about the book intended for sex education classes. He added that he considered the book to be based on a “pseudo science” in which everyone is born heterosexual, and only become gay from either watching too much pornography or opting for it as a lifestyle choice. The book, Mr Szczeplocki claimed, also said that homosexuality was reversible.

The book added fuel to the debate in Poland about homosexuality between a growing liberal voice and conservative Catholics, who remain opposed to what they regard as the insidious and unwelcome advance of relaxed attitudes towards homosexuality from western Europe. Controversies over the portrayal of sexuality or unusual sexual preferences in school books are nothing new to Poland. A few years ago one book generated public attention after it printed an article on how some men like to dress up as women next to a picture of a kilted Scotsman.