Blast from the past?
As the dust settles on the row over the takeover by Deutsche Bank of BIG Bank Gdanski (BIG BG), it is worth looking closely at the affair to see what it tells us about the attitude of Polish politicians to Western, especially German, investors and the curious role-reversals that can occur when vested rather than national interests come into play. For the truth of the BIG BG affair is that it illustrates once again that in many issues, rather than traditionally understood attitudes of left and right, it is the narrow party interest that
drives political reactions.
Once the news broke that Deutsche Bank had made a move on BIG BG, the natural reaction of all politicians was one of surprise, and initially concern. That was unsurprising in a situation where very few people had any inkling what was about to happen, although this ignorance was entirely appropriate in something as sensitive as a bank takeover. But once politicians had recovered their balance, it was time for them to take up a position, which is where the interesting divisions emerged.
Time after time the ruling Solidarity Election Action (AWS) coalition has been accused of pandering to nationalist sentiment, and playing the anti-German card for short-term political gain. Yet in the case of the Deutsche takeover, what was striking was how the government managed to retain a level head and quickly conclude that takeovers in the private sector were of no concern to governing politicians. True, Treasury Minister Emil Wasacz raised questions about the deal, but his objections were directed more at the hapless head of insurer Powszechny Zaklad Ubezpieczen (PZU) whose votes had allowed the takeover to succeed, than against German investors or Deutsche Bank as such. Similarly, deputy Treasury Minister Alicja Kornasiewicz, supervising the banking sector, came out strongly in favor of letting market forces do their work, as did National Bank of Poland (NBP) Chairwoman Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, herself linked to the political right.
What of the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) opposition party? Here is a party that in its public rhetoric makes much play at painting the ruling coalition as anti-Western, anti-market, and anti-European Union (EU), and which is constantly bending the ear of Western ambassadors on how an SLD government would be so much more sensible than AWS. President Aleksander Kwasniewski, too, is forever popping up at Davos-like events to encourage Western investors to come to Poland. So all the more surprising to see the charge against the Deutsche takeover led by none other than the SLD and Kwasniewski himself. The Deutsche bid, we were told, was a potential "threat to the national interest," a murky deal that had to be investigated and if possible stopped. As they say in Private Eye, some mistake surely.
Not quite. It is no coincidence that a member of the supervisory board of BIG BG is current presidential economic adviser Marek Belka, a curious place for a state official to be. And it takes only a cursory examination of the background of BIG BG to note that it was set up in the early 1990s in close cooperation with politicians who are now leading figures in the SLD. So it was unsurprising to find ruling politicians last week openly suggesting that the Deutsche takeover would be an unexpected blow to future election fundraising activities of both Kwasniewski and the SLD.
The truth is, moreover, that post-communist politicians are no strangers to anti-German sentiment, since whipping up anti-German hatred was one of the main propaganda weapons in the armory of the Polish communists before 1989. Anyone familiar with recent Polish history will well remember pages of communist newspapers filled with lurid stories of the threat of German revanchism and imperialists from the Federal Republic plotting to recover pre-war German territory. So in some ways it is strangely familiar to see those politicians who were happy to participate in a political system that relied on anti-German hysteria to legitimize their political positions slipping so comfortably into the old routine.
And all the more comforting to find AWS politicians rising above stereotypes of anti-German sentiment to remain loyal to the political tradition of genuine Polish-German political reconciliation that commenced in 1989 at the historic summit meeting between then Chancellor Helmut Kohl and then Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki. Successive center-right prime ministers have been at the forefront of building up the trust between Poles and Germans that was destroyed not only during the war, but allowed to further decline under the communists. Try as one might, one cannot find an AWS or center-right minister falling into the trap of feeding on cheap anti-German sentiments to preserve short-term political interests. And how sad but not entirely unpredictable to see the SLD doing just that.
Marek Matraszek is the Warsaw director of CEC Government Relations. He can be e-mailed at director@cec.com.pl
