Cold showers
By Chris Mularczyk
Easter Monday in the Polish tradition is the day people happily spray each other with water. Many of our political players in and out of government seem in need of a cold shower. The list I am about to present is pretty lengthy.
Number one on the list is, of course, Prime Minister Leszek Miller. Maybe a bucketful of cold water would make him think again before promising that there will be no more resignations from this government. If that was an unwise offer of hostages to fortune, he followed it up by something even more unfortunate. At a recent press conference he chastised journalists for using the fact of a meeting between him, finance minister Grzegorz Kołodko and minister of economy, labor and social policy Jerzy Hausner as evidence that there was serious conflict in the government. Miller remarked that the meeting was routine and therefore not newsworthy. Always a wag, he joked that it would only be news if one of the ministers arrived naked. The prime minister really should know better than to give the exhibitionist finance minister such ideas.
Number two on the list must be Lech Nikolski, the minister in charge of the government's information campaign for the European Union referendum. He got pretty hot under the collar during the hearing of the investigative commission into the Rywin-gate affair. As minister of information, he was remarkably uncommunicative. Even if I were running a high fever, I would not believe that the chief of Miller's political office (which was the job he was doing in July 2002) did not discuss the Rywin affair with his boss. It is also unbelievable that he failed to produce any political analysis on the likely outcome of the debate around the media bill. But an ice-cold shower for Nikolski arrived last weekend when only 45% of Hungarians voted in the EU referendum. If that turnout is replicated here, Nikolski will be history, as will his boss. There would be no resurrection for either of them.
Third on the list must be the ministerial tandem of Kołodko and Hausner. They are both competing for a deluge from their PM. Openly fighting in public in normal times would mean the trapdoor opening for both of them. However, these are not normal times. All the money is on Kołodko getting an early bath and Hausner ending up as deputy on Captain Miller's Titanic.
Further down the list comes Maciej Płażyński, the now resigned leader of the PO. His frustration with not making any headway in the polls has led him to throw in the towel. He is already hinting, however, that he intends to take a jump in at the deep end and try to form yet another party of the center-right. It may be small enough for all its members to meet in his bathtub.
Another name from the pantheon of former ministers yearning to get back into politics is the former treasury minister in the Jerzy Buzek government, Aldona Kamela-Sowińska. She is forming her own party that wants to be the 138th party to attempt to unite the center-right. She is proud to have no famous names in her ranks and promises to concentrate her party's efforts on reducing unemployment from its near 19% to the 7% average in the EU. One of the measures she proposes is to boost sales of products such as pork to the great market in the East. All her efforts to date have been a damp squib. Her new party has all the makings of a trickle rather than a political tidal wave.
The whole country is heading for a soaking on the EU issue. Even if the political establishment somehow negotiates the iceberg called "referendum," the future looks bleak. The country is totally unprepared for accession. Its public finances are leaking. Its public administration's state of preparedness is similar to that of the Iraqi army. On EU issues its politicians are wet behind the ears. The economy desperately needs lifeboats that no political force is prepared to offer. When accession time comes, the country may get such an ice-cold bath that it will descend into economic hypothermia.
Still, anything is better than failing to get into the EU. Any defeat in the referendum and subsequent failure to enter the EU would result in a political and economic ice age for this country. The trouble is that the political establishment seems incapable of lifting itself above the short-term needs of its component parts. Instead of a joint "yes" campaign, every party is pushing out its own boat. The government wants to use the referendum to stay afloat. Even the president is sailing on his own course. They really do not seem to understand that soon it may be a case of not sailing but drowning.
