Clarity of vision:
To her many enemies she is nothing more than a muckraker. But to the ordinary people she devotes her time to helping, Julia Pitera is a true crusader for citizens' rights.
The first time we meet, the president of the national chapter of corruption watchdog Transparency International arrives late from an early morning meeting. Our conversation is continuously punctuated by phone calls, which are swiftly handled by a volunteer assistant, though Pitera takes time to answer all those who insist their cases are so urgent they cannot wait to call back. During our second meeting, Pitera is much more relaxed, although this interview too is delayed and our conversation is also interrupted by phone calls from all over the country with reports of new cases of corruption.
"Because corruption evolves, you see," explains Pitera with a disarming smile. "I guess you could say corruption goes through different trends."
Inevitably, we begin by talking about business and corruption in a nation that seems to have such practices embedded in its history since the liberum veto - the right of any MP to veto the proceedings of the Sejm - and corrupt Russian officials during the partitions of the 19th century. Pitera is refreshingly open.
"Corruption in business and corruption in politics is starting to be a linked phenomenon," she says. "It is difficult to talk about corruption in business without discussing corruption in politics, really."
Pitera draws a clear line between "an ordinary person" and politicians, who for her and most citizens are synonymous with all that is questionable in our society. And who can blame her? Pitera has spent nearly a decade looking over documents journalists can only dream of getting their hands on.
Pitera's interest in corruptive behaviour started when she first became a Warsaw city counsellor in the mid-1990s and thought that her powers would allow her to fight the pathology of cronyism and bribery. When she encountered a glass wall of resistance, she also discovered the connections that bind business people and civil servants together. Although she no longer wonders why a city with a budget as huge as Warsaw's can be in a state of ill repair and on the verge of financial collapse, she is aware of the mechanisms that were responsible for bringing it to such a state.
Though the conspiracy theory attitude may be difficult to swallow at first, especially in a country where few people will publicly implicate corrupt officials, Pitera subtly drops hints and, eventually, names that seem to make the puzzle fit.
"Show me one incident where you don't have a politician or someone who knows a politician involved," she says rhetorically. "Show me one successful company on the market that is not connected with politicians."
This, Pitera says, is particularly evident in the construction sector where politicians are presidents of companies. In a business-politics relationship, one can find an abundance of combinations, and these Pitera enumerates with the speed of a machine gun: construction companies whose presidents are Sejm representatives; MPs who preside over well-known domestic brands, such as a leading dairy products firm; another Sejm representative who owns a company that distributes and sells hands-free sets for mobile phones; and yet another who owns a vodka distillery. She then pauses as if to say, "I rest my case."
Now with two years as president of Transparency International Polska under her belt, Pitera is able to examine corruption not only in the Warsaw city structures, but also its various shades and half-forms as it rears its ugly head throughout the country. And if we are to take her word for it, there is plenty to examine.
"If you have scandals in local governments," she says, "they are strictly political because gmina and self-government units are naturally political. It is enough to trace changes on the self-government level, and you can see how the attitude towards different companies changes when companies linked with the current political arrangement in a gmina enter the scene during a tender."
Pitera says that small and medium-sized enterprises have a disastrous time in such an environment. She cites the example of Trzcianka, a small city in northwestern Poland that suffers from a high unemployment rate. When the Trzcianka authorities decided to build a sports hall, a small local construction entrepreneur took part in the tender. He employs approximately 100 people, making his, by local standards, a large company.
"What would a smart mayor do?" asks Pitera. "He would take care of such an entrepreneur because he provides employment."
Perhaps in an ideal world. But in this case a second developer, one with hundreds of investments completed around the country who, according to Pitera, is politically connected with the highest authorities, also took part in the tender. The Trzcianka mayor told the local entrepreneur that his company was too small to build such a project and suggested creating a consortium. The small entrepreneur refused the offer, and the large contractor won the bid. Pitera shakes her head.
"I do not think the EU will affect the issue of corruption at all because this is a strictly Polish matter," she says. "We will have to change certain things through legislation, but structurally speaking, matters will not be taken care of by the EU - that we will have to take care of on our own. Sometimes the corruptive relations cannot even be pointed out because a given company could just be 'friends' with the authorities."
A second, parallel universe has been created, she points out, which is not populated by "normal people," but rather by authorities that feel they are completely untouchable. And Pitera believes that laying the blame for the phenomenon at the door of the "post-communist mentality" does not do justice to the corruption mechanisms, in that it is not enough to claim that all politicians are corrupt at heart.
"It's rather a question of public figures feeling absolutely certain that they can get away with it," she says. "Public persons do not hide the fact that they have been linked to extortion or that they are in close contact with the justice system."
Pitera believes that only legal processes and systematic changes can have any impact on corruption and alter the status quo. She also says that "social mechanisms do not work in a country where politicians participate in social gatherings and merrymaking with gangsters.
"No moral authorities can change the fact that politicians, from the right to the left, are involved in corruption scandals; we need new mechanisms."
Pitera sees the solution in changing the voting ordinance from proportional representation to majority representation. Only last week a group of prominent business people, writers, artists, and scholars signed an open letter to the president asking him to consider such a change.
"I cannot predict what the effects of such a change would be, but I do not think things can get any better with the system we have right now," Pitera says. "We have not tried the majority vote yet, but we have experienced the proportional vote several times, and it is becoming worse and worse with every term. The Sejm makeup is continuously deteriorating, the representatives are less prepared for their tasks and the level of corruption is increasing."
Having come fourth in Warsaw's recent mayoral election as an independent candidate with her own election committee, Pitera's poor performance could be seen as an indication that Varsovians have grown increasingly tired of news on corruption and embezzlement. But when it comes to judging the current mayor, such an outspoken person as Pitera remains surprisingly tongue-tied.
"I would like to withhold my judgement of Lech Kaczyński's first 100 days in office," she says. "I am more aware of the 12-year-old mess that he stepped into than he is himself, and therefore I am not quick to judge him. I am aware of the fact that city hall is a breeding ground for corruption. The construction of one or two bridges and a tunnel is not a lot of development for 12 years of the previous rule. I can't judge Kaczyński's actions after four months because everything in the city government requires very precise internal control."
Moving away from the self-governments and city authorities and into the higher ranks of politics, Pitera manages to see a silver lining in the cloud of the Rywin bribery scandal. Regardless of Gazeta Wyborcza editor-in-chief Adam Michnik's motivation in revealing it so late, she explains that many interdependencies and connections in our political structures might otherwise have gone unnoticed.
"On the one hand, one could say that it's too late because Michnik should have published (the news) earlier, but I'd like to point out that because he didn't do so, another interesting phenomenon surfaced," Pitera says. "Namely, that ministers, including the justice minister as well as the prime minister, all knew about it. A lot of people who are responsible for the shape of our nation knew about it, and they didn't do anything about it."
She lapses into a more sombre tone, although not entirely that of helplessness.
"I don't want to get into it because I don't know anything about it and will probably never find out the whole truth about it anyway," she says. "But the fact that the publication of the information was delayed also revealed a second issue, that those who wield power did not fulfil the obligation that the possession of this type of knowledge places upon them; they should have turned to the relevant authorities to have the matter explained.
"We won't understand anything about this affair. But how is it possible that normal people and journalists are aware of so many things that seem to be beyond the grasp of the prosecution? Is the prosecution really free of any bias?"
Pitera has managed to find out that at the moment there are six prosecutors working on the Rywin case, but she points out that their names have not been made public. As her job description and natural interest call for it, she cannot help but be suspicious.
"I'd like to find out what cases they have tried previously because according to one of the papers, two of the prosecutors have allegedly been involved in cases that were on the border of politics and business," she says.
But there is more to Pitera than the accusatory tone and a piercing stare that understandably do not win her many politician friends. She also has a sense of humour and using it, she is able to distance herself from politics.
"We cannot expect politicians to wake up one morning and decide to do everything right," she laughs. "For many years we have talked about political will, thinking that a politician will decide to act according to his political will and to sever all his questionable relationships and will admit to taking campaign money from various individuals; will a man with a political vision suddenly emerge? We can't be that naive. Our politicians are ineffective because they do not understand the mechanisms or they do not want to understand them."
Before our conversation ends, Pitera jokes about non-governmental organisations being tempted to take part in the global trend for creative accounting, but is quick to set the record straight and points out that TIP's funds come from TI headquarters in Berlin as well as highly coveted grants, including a World Bank grant that the Polish branch is currently awaiting. She also talks of TIP's help that it extends to individual gminas and their authorities when volunteers assist it with drafting documents and regulations. At the moment, TIP has 600 intervention cases registered within its files, which excludes the individual advice Pitera and her volunteers offer on a daily basis.
Though she may be a crusader, Pitera is not an idealist. As we wrap up our interview, she remarks that her co-operation with governmental institutions is less than perfect, and invitations are sent to TIP only when the government wants to include that information in a report that it will send to Brussels. Although respected and trusted by the people, Transparency International, she says, has yet to catch the government's eye.
"I would very much like it if our comments regarding new laws and the general state of the nation were listened to, but that rarely happens," she says by way of a goodbye.
The first time we meet, the president of the national chapter of corruption watchdog Transparency International arrives late from an early morning meeting. Our conversation is continuously punctuated by phone calls, which are swiftly handled by a volunteer assistant, though Pitera takes time to answer all those who insist their cases are so urgent they cannot wait to call back. During our second meeting, Pitera is much more relaxed, although this interview too is delayed and our conversation is also interrupted by phone calls from all over the country with reports of new cases of corruption.
"Because corruption evolves, you see," explains Pitera with a disarming smile. "I guess you could say corruption goes through different trends."
Inevitably, we begin by talking about business and corruption in a nation that seems to have such practices embedded in its history since the liberum veto - the right of any MP to veto the proceedings of the Sejm - and corrupt Russian officials during the partitions of the 19th century. Pitera is refreshingly open.
"Corruption in business and corruption in politics is starting to be a linked phenomenon," she says. "It is difficult to talk about corruption in business without discussing corruption in politics, really."
Pitera draws a clear line between "an ordinary person" and politicians, who for her and most citizens are synonymous with all that is questionable in our society. And who can blame her? Pitera has spent nearly a decade looking over documents journalists can only dream of getting their hands on.
Pitera's interest in corruptive behaviour started when she first became a Warsaw city counsellor in the mid-1990s and thought that her powers would allow her to fight the pathology of cronyism and bribery. When she encountered a glass wall of resistance, she also discovered the connections that bind business people and civil servants together. Although she no longer wonders why a city with a budget as huge as Warsaw's can be in a state of ill repair and on the verge of financial collapse, she is aware of the mechanisms that were responsible for bringing it to such a state.
Though the conspiracy theory attitude may be difficult to swallow at first, especially in a country where few people will publicly implicate corrupt officials, Pitera subtly drops hints and, eventually, names that seem to make the puzzle fit.
"Show me one incident where you don't have a politician or someone who knows a politician involved," she says rhetorically. "Show me one successful company on the market that is not connected with politicians."
This, Pitera says, is particularly evident in the construction sector where politicians are presidents of companies. In a business-politics relationship, one can find an abundance of combinations, and these Pitera enumerates with the speed of a machine gun: construction companies whose presidents are Sejm representatives; MPs who preside over well-known domestic brands, such as a leading dairy products firm; another Sejm representative who owns a company that distributes and sells hands-free sets for mobile phones; and yet another who owns a vodka distillery. She then pauses as if to say, "I rest my case."
Now with two years as president of Transparency International Polska under her belt, Pitera is able to examine corruption not only in the Warsaw city structures, but also its various shades and half-forms as it rears its ugly head throughout the country. And if we are to take her word for it, there is plenty to examine.
"If you have scandals in local governments," she says, "they are strictly political because gmina and self-government units are naturally political. It is enough to trace changes on the self-government level, and you can see how the attitude towards different companies changes when companies linked with the current political arrangement in a gmina enter the scene during a tender."
Pitera says that small and medium-sized enterprises have a disastrous time in such an environment. She cites the example of Trzcianka, a small city in northwestern Poland that suffers from a high unemployment rate. When the Trzcianka authorities decided to build a sports hall, a small local construction entrepreneur took part in the tender. He employs approximately 100 people, making his, by local standards, a large company.
"What would a smart mayor do?" asks Pitera. "He would take care of such an entrepreneur because he provides employment."
Perhaps in an ideal world. But in this case a second developer, one with hundreds of investments completed around the country who, according to Pitera, is politically connected with the highest authorities, also took part in the tender. The Trzcianka mayor told the local entrepreneur that his company was too small to build such a project and suggested creating a consortium. The small entrepreneur refused the offer, and the large contractor won the bid. Pitera shakes her head.
"I do not think the EU will affect the issue of corruption at all because this is a strictly Polish matter," she says. "We will have to change certain things through legislation, but structurally speaking, matters will not be taken care of by the EU - that we will have to take care of on our own. Sometimes the corruptive relations cannot even be pointed out because a given company could just be 'friends' with the authorities."
A second, parallel universe has been created, she points out, which is not populated by "normal people," but rather by authorities that feel they are completely untouchable. And Pitera believes that laying the blame for the phenomenon at the door of the "post-communist mentality" does not do justice to the corruption mechanisms, in that it is not enough to claim that all politicians are corrupt at heart.
"It's rather a question of public figures feeling absolutely certain that they can get away with it," she says. "Public persons do not hide the fact that they have been linked to extortion or that they are in close contact with the justice system."
Pitera believes that only legal processes and systematic changes can have any impact on corruption and alter the status quo. She also says that "social mechanisms do not work in a country where politicians participate in social gatherings and merrymaking with gangsters.
"No moral authorities can change the fact that politicians, from the right to the left, are involved in corruption scandals; we need new mechanisms."
Pitera sees the solution in changing the voting ordinance from proportional representation to majority representation. Only last week a group of prominent business people, writers, artists, and scholars signed an open letter to the president asking him to consider such a change.
"I cannot predict what the effects of such a change would be, but I do not think things can get any better with the system we have right now," Pitera says. "We have not tried the majority vote yet, but we have experienced the proportional vote several times, and it is becoming worse and worse with every term. The Sejm makeup is continuously deteriorating, the representatives are less prepared for their tasks and the level of corruption is increasing."
Having come fourth in Warsaw's recent mayoral election as an independent candidate with her own election committee, Pitera's poor performance could be seen as an indication that Varsovians have grown increasingly tired of news on corruption and embezzlement. But when it comes to judging the current mayor, such an outspoken person as Pitera remains surprisingly tongue-tied.
"I would like to withhold my judgement of Lech Kaczyński's first 100 days in office," she says. "I am more aware of the 12-year-old mess that he stepped into than he is himself, and therefore I am not quick to judge him. I am aware of the fact that city hall is a breeding ground for corruption. The construction of one or two bridges and a tunnel is not a lot of development for 12 years of the previous rule. I can't judge Kaczyński's actions after four months because everything in the city government requires very precise internal control."
Moving away from the self-governments and city authorities and into the higher ranks of politics, Pitera manages to see a silver lining in the cloud of the Rywin bribery scandal. Regardless of Gazeta Wyborcza editor-in-chief Adam Michnik's motivation in revealing it so late, she explains that many interdependencies and connections in our political structures might otherwise have gone unnoticed.
"On the one hand, one could say that it's too late because Michnik should have published (the news) earlier, but I'd like to point out that because he didn't do so, another interesting phenomenon surfaced," Pitera says. "Namely, that ministers, including the justice minister as well as the prime minister, all knew about it. A lot of people who are responsible for the shape of our nation knew about it, and they didn't do anything about it."
She lapses into a more sombre tone, although not entirely that of helplessness.
"I don't want to get into it because I don't know anything about it and will probably never find out the whole truth about it anyway," she says. "But the fact that the publication of the information was delayed also revealed a second issue, that those who wield power did not fulfil the obligation that the possession of this type of knowledge places upon them; they should have turned to the relevant authorities to have the matter explained.
"We won't understand anything about this affair. But how is it possible that normal people and journalists are aware of so many things that seem to be beyond the grasp of the prosecution? Is the prosecution really free of any bias?"
Pitera has managed to find out that at the moment there are six prosecutors working on the Rywin case, but she points out that their names have not been made public. As her job description and natural interest call for it, she cannot help but be suspicious.
"I'd like to find out what cases they have tried previously because according to one of the papers, two of the prosecutors have allegedly been involved in cases that were on the border of politics and business," she says.
But there is more to Pitera than the accusatory tone and a piercing stare that understandably do not win her many politician friends. She also has a sense of humour and using it, she is able to distance herself from politics.
"We cannot expect politicians to wake up one morning and decide to do everything right," she laughs. "For many years we have talked about political will, thinking that a politician will decide to act according to his political will and to sever all his questionable relationships and will admit to taking campaign money from various individuals; will a man with a political vision suddenly emerge? We can't be that naive. Our politicians are ineffective because they do not understand the mechanisms or they do not want to understand them."
Before our conversation ends, Pitera jokes about non-governmental organisations being tempted to take part in the global trend for creative accounting, but is quick to set the record straight and points out that TIP's funds come from TI headquarters in Berlin as well as highly coveted grants, including a World Bank grant that the Polish branch is currently awaiting. She also talks of TIP's help that it extends to individual gminas and their authorities when volunteers assist it with drafting documents and regulations. At the moment, TIP has 600 intervention cases registered within its files, which excludes the individual advice Pitera and her volunteers offer on a daily basis.
Though she may be a crusader, Pitera is not an idealist. As we wrap up our interview, she remarks that her co-operation with governmental institutions is less than perfect, and invitations are sent to TIP only when the government wants to include that information in a report that it will send to Brussels. Although respected and trusted by the people, Transparency International, she says, has yet to catch the government's eye.
"I would very much like it if our comments regarding new laws and the general state of the nation were listened to, but that rarely happens," she says by way of a goodbye.
