Entangled in the past
Though 17 years have passed since the collapse of communism, Poland is still haunted by the specters of its undemocratic past. With an ever-increasing number of public figures facing allegations of cooperating with communist secret services, lustration, or vetting, has become one of the country's hottest political issues. A bill that will soon come into force aims to name and shame collaborators, which supporters say will enable Poland to finally break with its communist past. However, opponents argue the legislation will trample the rights of the innocent.
Since the collapse of communism, Poland has been plagued by scandals concerning high-visibility figures accused of collaboration with communist secret services. Most recently, former Finance Minister Zyta Gilowska was dismissed over allegations that she lied in her vetting statement. Gilowska ferociously denied having spied for the communist secret police (SB), but lost her post anyway. Last week, following the commencement of vetting procedures, a former SB officer admitted registering Gilowska as an agent without her knowledge. However, the truth of the officer's statement is considered questionable.
In another recent case, an associate of Pope John Paul II, Father Michał Czajkowski, who at first denied any collaboration, finally admitted that for some 24 years he had been reporting on dissidents. "I want to apologize and ask for forgiveness, especially for those whom I have hurt. There is no doubt about my guilt," Czajkowski wrote in a statement.
A political issue
With everyone a suspect, vetting continues to spark controversy in Poland. The ruling Law and Justice (PiS), its coalition partners League of Polish Families (LPR) and Self-defense (SO), and opposition party Civic Platform (PO) are all calling for greater transparency in public life. Out of 460 deputies, 372 voted in favor of the law, which changes the current vetting system. Three abstained and just 44 deputies, all from the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), voted against it. Last week, senators vehemently debated the bill and suggested a number of amendments. The Senate will vote on them during its next session planned for August 22-24th. However, no major changes to the Sejm's bill are likely to be passed.
Under the system propsed by the the Sejm, vetting will be more widespread and open. The lists of agents and of people who they used as sources of information will be published and everyone will have access to their own file. Moreover, employers will have the right to fire former collaborators.
Opponents of the new law argue that by disclosing the files produced by communist secret services, innocent people could also be stigmatized. The supporters of vetting emphasize that citizens have the right to know what kind of people hold important public posts.
"Vetting is a problem in those countries where anti-communist opposition was strong," observes Professor Andrzej Paczkowski, a well-known historian and a member of the board at the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN). "The opposition in Poland was strong, so there were many secret collaborators, and in this respect there are as many people who do not want the archives disclosed as there are people who do."
Thou shalt not bear false witness
Under the previous vetting bill passed in 1997, many individuals were obliged to officially declare whether they had collaborated with the secret services in the years 1944-1990, including the President, members of parliament, government, voivodship governors, and heads of institutions, such as the Supreme Chamber of Control, the Central Statistical Office and the Social Insurance Institution. If any statement raised doubts as to the truth of the information, a special vetting ombudsman launched an investigation. If he was unable to clarify the matter, a legal procedure in the vetting court was begun. The trial was carried out in accordance with the code of penal proceedings (KPK), which guaranteed a presumption of innocence and took into account witness testimony. If the information given in the statement proved to be false, the vetting court declared the person a "vetting liar."
Vetting liars immediately lost their public posts. Moreover, they were banned from holding any other public office for 10 years from the date of the verdict. This was a specifically Polish system and no other former European communist state vetted people according to such a procedure.
Bringing the change
Since the introduction of this system, some 27,000 people have been vetted, 265 cases have been examined in the vetting court, and 80 people have been declared vetting liars. Most politicians are unhappy with these statistics.
"The current system has not worked," says Sławomir Nitras, a PO deputy and member of the parliamentary commission that prepared the new vetting bill. The head of that commission, PiS deputy Stanisław Pięta, says that the old system compromised the reputation of vetting. According to the Constitutional Tribunal's verdict last autumn, a person could be considered a collaborator only when a number of conditions were met. Pięta says this caused the court to consider some former secret-service agents as victims.
As Pięta explains: "An agent would bring in two SB officers who testified that they had forged documents to get a bonus, and the court would pardon such a person," he says. Such circumstances lead Pięta to claim that some problems with the current system stem from the fact that the court takes into account evidence given by witnesses whose testimony may be untrustworthy.
Under the new system there is no presumption of innocence, the current vetting court will be liquidated and people will be able to seek justice in 11 regular courts according to the civil code, which means witnesses will not be heard. The office of the ombudsman will be abolished and there will be no statements in which people have to declare whether they collaborated or not.
Instead, some 100,000 or even 400,000 people, not only members of government and parliament, but also members of local governments, people who work in public administration, diplomats, CEOs of state companies, legal counselors, notaries, journalists, presidents of universities, university teachers and even school principals, will need to apply to the IPN for vetting statements based on its archives. If they fail to do so, they might lose their jobs.
Agents pointed out
Established in December 1998, the IPN possesses the archives of the communist Ministry of Internal Affairs, army security agencies, and other documents produced by courts, prosecutor's offices and prisons during communist times. It is the IPN that will now be responsible for vetting.
Stanisław Pięta summarizes the new system: "The role of IPN will be to provide information on what's in the file, and everyone will draw conclusions for themselves." These statements will be published on the internet, but IPN is not to disclose intimate details of people's lives. Based on such certificates issued by IPN, employers will have the right to fire people whose pasts are not pristine.
According to SLD, the only parliamentary party that voted against the bill, the new law infringes human and civil rights. But deputy Ryszard Kalisz emphasizes that his party supports wider access to the IPN archives. "We don't have anything against every citizen having access to their file," he says. Kalisz stresses, however, that before it is made public, information in the file should be verified. "The truth is not in the files," he claims.
To everyone's surprise, Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński also admitted that some SB documents might have been forged, when he revealed his own file in June. "The materials gathered by SB are deceitful, and even if they are true, they often concern the private sphere. Revealing them would hurt other people. Why finish the SB's job?" he said in an interview for the conservative daily Nasz Dziennik.
However, Kaczyński has always been a staunch supporter of lustration and has long wanted the lists of agents revealed. So three months after the new vetting bill comes into force, the IPN will be required to publish lists of officers and employees of all communist security institutions as well as people treated by agents as "personal sources of information," which has led to the greatest controversy.
Professor Paczkowski says that the file entries are certainly authentic, but the problem lies in what they entail. "I know of many cases in which someone was registered, but after two months they ended collaboration without having passed on any information. And how should such a person be treated? In the same way as somebody who had systematically reported for 15 or 20 years?" asks Paczkowski.
Looking back in anger
Advocates of vetting stress the need for transparency in public life, but that is not the only problem they hope to solve through the use of lustration. "We have to protect ourselves against the ring of Russian agents. Many important posts are still filled by people who were agents," says Stanisław Pięta.
According to Professor Paczkowski, the idea of vetting is based on two premises. "It has been assumed that after the change of the system, the secret services are still active as rings, especially in the economic and financial spheres," he says. "So an attempt should be made to try to establish whether and to what extent the former links - officer and his agent - are still functioning."
The second element is the moral need to punish and stigmatize offenders. "This is an issue for people who belonged to the former opposition or Solidarity and are now looking for traitors, for people who pretended they were friends, but who in fact spied," says Paczkowski. "You can't run away from the past, so it's better to settle accounts as quickly as possible," he adds.
It has been pointed out that the biggest supporters of vetting are the young. The new vetting system might trigger a faster generational power shift, as only people born after August 1, 1972 will be free from suspicion, which could see a new younger generation taking key posts in the country.
