God save the celebration
Separate events are envisioned when Queen Elizabeth comes for the first-ever visit of a British monarch to Poland. Walesa is off on a worldwide speaking tour, starting with Stockholm. He'll come home in time to be part of Warsaw Welcome for the queen, where he will see her at a special luncheon banquet. And, maybe he'll have had some distance from last fall's bitterness to appreciate the irony that he issued the invitation to the queen to visit the newly democratic Solidarity-run Poland, but that by the time she makes it, the Solidarity rulers are long gone and she'll be formally feted by the ex-Communists led by the man who ousted Walesa, Kwasniewski.
And you thought Walesa was heading back to the Gdansk shipyard and his electrician's job, with a security guard in tow earning twice as much as the ex-president? Not too likely anytime soon. There's the U.S. tour after Scandanavia and the queen's visit. It's also unclear what happens next on Walesa's tax debt, which the government says now is $1.5 million in taxes owed on the $1 million "gift" from Warner Brothers. Putting a lien on his house adds insult to injury but it won't get the tax police far in their collection crusade.
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Andrzej Zielinski, the Communications Minister, was all upbeat and cheery, positively buoyant, in his message that telecom privatization was on the horizon. Well, almost. After the turn of the century, say. At the end of a 45-minute speech, with little but boilerplate assurances that change was coming in the monopoly Telekomunikacja Polska SA, Zielinski told the restless American Chamber of Commerce breakfast crowd that he didn't have time for questions: urgent meetings and all that. But, he said, he'd just love to come back - and maybe listen to the AMCHAM questions, rather than talking himself. That was supposed to be the idea of the breakfast encounter. But listening, rather than talking, isn't always the strong suit of many ministers under privatization pressures.
One of the most restless members: Donald Mucha, chairman of the board of RP Telecom, TPSA's competitor in laying down local phone lines. Mucha's muttered rebuttals to the upbeat Zielinski weren't fit for print in a family newspaper, however.
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Privatization Ministry skeptics had doubted if more than a third of adult Poles would pick up their certificates to participate in the long-delayed Mass Privatization Program. Wrong. The ministry bigwigs had relied on opinion polls last fall that said few Poles knew much about the National Investment Funds and probably wouldn't take the country up on its offer of a share in the NIFs. But momentum is building, along with more information. PKO BP is handing over about 100,000 certificates a day - one per eligible Pole, with more than 28 million certificates available. So far, about 9 million have been claimed. And ministry adviser Stanislaw Berkieta, who is on leave from Citibank in London, says he's sure that his estimate will be nearly on the mark: that about 20 million certificates will be claimed by the deadline of mid-December.
And interest is growing by outsiders as well, in buying up certificates being cashed in by the Poles: Raiffeisen Capital & Investment Polska has two customers who have more than 10,000 certificates each; PKO is reported to have one customer who has bought 100,000 certificates.
And you thought Walesa was heading back to the Gdansk shipyard and his electrician's job, with a security guard in tow earning twice as much as the ex-president? Not too likely anytime soon. There's the U.S. tour after Scandanavia and the queen's visit. It's also unclear what happens next on Walesa's tax debt, which the government says now is $1.5 million in taxes owed on the $1 million "gift" from Warner Brothers. Putting a lien on his house adds insult to injury but it won't get the tax police far in their collection crusade.
* * * *
Andrzej Zielinski, the Communications Minister, was all upbeat and cheery, positively buoyant, in his message that telecom privatization was on the horizon. Well, almost. After the turn of the century, say. At the end of a 45-minute speech, with little but boilerplate assurances that change was coming in the monopoly Telekomunikacja Polska SA, Zielinski told the restless American Chamber of Commerce breakfast crowd that he didn't have time for questions: urgent meetings and all that. But, he said, he'd just love to come back - and maybe listen to the AMCHAM questions, rather than talking himself. That was supposed to be the idea of the breakfast encounter. But listening, rather than talking, isn't always the strong suit of many ministers under privatization pressures.
One of the most restless members: Donald Mucha, chairman of the board of RP Telecom, TPSA's competitor in laying down local phone lines. Mucha's muttered rebuttals to the upbeat Zielinski weren't fit for print in a family newspaper, however.
* * * *
Privatization Ministry skeptics had doubted if more than a third of adult Poles would pick up their certificates to participate in the long-delayed Mass Privatization Program. Wrong. The ministry bigwigs had relied on opinion polls last fall that said few Poles knew much about the National Investment Funds and probably wouldn't take the country up on its offer of a share in the NIFs. But momentum is building, along with more information. PKO BP is handing over about 100,000 certificates a day - one per eligible Pole, with more than 28 million certificates available. So far, about 9 million have been claimed. And ministry adviser Stanislaw Berkieta, who is on leave from Citibank in London, says he's sure that his estimate will be nearly on the mark: that about 20 million certificates will be claimed by the deadline of mid-December.
And interest is growing by outsiders as well, in buying up certificates being cashed in by the Poles: Raiffeisen Capital & Investment Polska has two customers who have more than 10,000 certificates each; PKO is reported to have one customer who has bought 100,000 certificates.
