Greek holiday
By Mirko Kaupat
Is the glass half empty or half full when it comes to the country's European Union accession?
This was the question tackled by EU enlargement commissioner Günter Verheugen, who urged Poles to see the glass as half full.
Verheugen, who has been referred to as "our good uncle in Brussels" in the Polish press, uttered his statement last week when the heads of all 15 member states and the 10 candidate countries met in Athens to sign the accession treaty.
While Prime Minister Leszek Miller and foreign minister Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz added their names to the document, President Aleksander Kwaśniewski used the opportunity to give a pathetic speech that began with the words: "Polish dreams are being fulfilled."
It was a historic day for the country and the other nations about to join the Union, but for Miller, whose fate depends on a positive result in the EU referendum in early June, it was a single day to relax. There have been times when he had declared that a defeat in the referendum would be his personal defeat. But now that his popularity has dropped rapidly, he has changed his mind and no longer wants to spoil the referendum or his political future by committing himself too much to the campaign. Hence, Miller's strategy is to wait for a successful referendum vote and then survive at the top until he can actually lead the country into the Union. He then expects to ride the wave of EU euphoria to victory in the early general elections of June 2004.
In the meantime, the president has been left to do the public relations work for the country's accession, although there is a specific minister in Miller's cabinet who is responsible for leading the referendum campaign. But the appointment came too little too late, and Lech Nikolski has done nothing except run a couple of silly TV spots in an attempt to boost voters' sentiment for casting "yes" ballots in the June referendum.
Kwaśniewski must therefore continue to give these solo performances for EU support. He plans, for example, to write a personal letter urging a "yes" vote for the Union, to be delivered to 13 million households. He will also visit town after town and region after region to build support for the EU.
The outcome of Hungary's referendum in mid-April was a clear and positive indication that a "yes" vote here is possible, though many observers believe it will be difficult to achieve the necessary turnout of 50% of the electorate to make the vote binding. The recent decision by Jarosław Kalinowski and the PSL to support the accession campaign, however, may just be enough to convince rural voters - one of the segments of the electorate, which until now has only bad-mouthed the accession - to cast crucial "yes" ballots as well.
