In the Spotlight: Andrzej Kern

Reports of his death were interwoven with memories of a scandal that consumed Poland 15 years ago, when Kern's daughter Monika, then 16 years old, ran away from home with Maciej Malisiewicz, a 21-year-old man whose parents owned a fast-food outlet. Soon thereafter a warrant was issued for his arrest and his mother was questioned by police.

The media reported at the time that Andrzej Kern did not want his daughter to be with someone of lower social position and used his political power to persecute Malisiewicz and his family. The affair was fictionalized in the 1993 movie Uprowadzenie Agaty (The Kidnapping of Agata), where the father of the eponymous girl was cast as a villain. Kern filed several lawsuits against media titles for libel which he later won in court, long after his public career had ended.

In the aftermath of the affair, however, voices appeared which suggested that the media frenzy had been the product of a campaign to ruin an anti-communist politician. In press interviews, Kern himself claimed to have been the victim of a smear campaign because of a law he had been working on at the time which would have stripped the former communist party of its financial assets. The film was inspired by former communists too, he claimed. A new twist to this story appeared last year when Marek Piwowski, director of Uprowadzenie Agaty, admitted to having collaborated with the communist secret services.

Born in 1937, Andrzej Kern was a lawyer by profession and served as a defense attorney during many of the political trials of the 1960-80s period. He was also a co-founder of the conservative Centre Agreement (PC) party with the Jarosław and Lech Kaczyński.

Konrad Kiedrzyński

IMAGE: agencja gazeta