It's a wonderful world...
If you rise to the top of your trade, people get scared of your scathing pen, or keyboard, as the case may be.
But that doesn't mean that a columnist's life is a bed of roses. Every columnist, one suspects, is sometimes woken up in the middle of the night by the fear of being unable to say anything, of speechlessness. Granted, it doesn't happen that often, but that is the nightmare the present writer experienced last week.
There is a Polish saying: "They spit in your face and then they say it's raining." It describes, as you might guess, unmitigated gall, breathtaking insolence that leaves you feeling humiliated and furious, or, so to speak, speechless. There are insults too great for words, especially when they come from people who are supposed to represent you, as members of parliament are.
For if a columnist lives in a wonderful world, then the members of the parliamentary commission investigating the Rywingate affair live in an even better one. In that world, Lew Rywin is the only man responsible for corruption in this country. When, nearly two years ago, he approached Agora with an offer to sell an act of parliament for $17.5 million (zł.68.4 million), he was acting alone. In fact, the only crime he committed was to lie that the now infamous 'group holding the power' stood behind him.
Such are the conclusions of the report approved by the commission on Monday last week by a 5-4 margin. The report was written by Anita Błochowiak, a Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) deputy famous for her inquisitive questions about the location of toilets and "horizontal channels of transport," as she described lifts. Samoobrona's (Self-defense) representative Jan Łączny and the non-affiliated Bohdan Kopczyński, formerly of the League of Polish Families (LPR), voted for the findings, while Józef Szczepańczyk of the Polish People's Party (PSL) was helpfully away in his constituency, fuelling speculation that a deal bringing the PSL back into the government coalition was on the cards.
The world of Polish politics is such a pleasant, friendly place, if you believe the report. Sure, there are those who are desperate to spoil the party. Take Tomasz Nałęcz, the commission chairman, who has recently defected from the SLD's coalition partner the Labor Union (UP) to the newly formed Polish Social Democracy (SdPl). Calling the results of the vote a "disgrace," he declined to present it to parliament, saying he was too ashamed of this "pack of lies." But he is easily dismissed as a traitor of the left.
So now everything is clear. Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz, the foreign minister who resigned over a leak of sensitive information from the ministry on the same day the report was passed, stays on, but only because the ministry needs continuity. Aleksandra Jakubowska, the head of the prime minister's chancellery, also stays on, until May 2 anyway, but in her case, it is because she did nothing wrong.
Both have had some trouble with hard disks - though that is where the similarities end. While the 'Cimoszewicz disks' contain secret service reports, diplomatic correspondence as well as secretaries' e-mails discussing the finer points of fashion, the minister is only indirectly responsible for the leak. Still, he did the decent thing and offered to resign.
With Jakubowska, there is only one disk and it doesn't contain any state secrets. Neither has it been leaked. On the contrary, rather than excessive 'transparency,' the scandal with Minister Jakubowska stems from too much secrecy.
As the deputy culture minister, she was in charge of the broadcasting act that Rywin had offered to sell. When the commission began uncovering serious irregularities in the legislative process, which made Rywin's offer possible, Jakubowska was promoted. Strange, maybe, but then there was no proof that she was responsible for anything other than negligence.
A messy lawmaker, Jakubowska apparently adheres to the highest standards of orderliness when it comes to leaving her desk, and computer, to her successor. She formatted the hard disk in her ministry computer. When the investigators recovered the lost data, it turned out to directly contradict some of the statements she had made under oath to the parliamentary commission.
It is hard not to see why Jan Rokita, a Civic Platform (PO) commission member, was flabbergasted by the commission's failure to name her as an accomplice of Rywin.
"Do I understand that we have concluded a madman approached Agora [about the bribe] and that [Prime Minister Leszek] Miller, Jakubowska... are all upright people, whose moral characters we commend to posterity?" he asked, listing the names of people heavily implicated in the scandal. When Tomasz Nałęcz, the chairman of the commission of the recently-formed Polish Social Democracy (SdPl), answered, "I am ashamed to say you are right," Rokita asked for a break, saying, "I need time to get my head around the concept."
And well he might. Sadly, there was no break for him. Neither are we likely to get a break from these people any time soon.
But that doesn't mean that a columnist's life is a bed of roses. Every columnist, one suspects, is sometimes woken up in the middle of the night by the fear of being unable to say anything, of speechlessness. Granted, it doesn't happen that often, but that is the nightmare the present writer experienced last week.
There is a Polish saying: "They spit in your face and then they say it's raining." It describes, as you might guess, unmitigated gall, breathtaking insolence that leaves you feeling humiliated and furious, or, so to speak, speechless. There are insults too great for words, especially when they come from people who are supposed to represent you, as members of parliament are.
For if a columnist lives in a wonderful world, then the members of the parliamentary commission investigating the Rywingate affair live in an even better one. In that world, Lew Rywin is the only man responsible for corruption in this country. When, nearly two years ago, he approached Agora with an offer to sell an act of parliament for $17.5 million (zł.68.4 million), he was acting alone. In fact, the only crime he committed was to lie that the now infamous 'group holding the power' stood behind him.
Such are the conclusions of the report approved by the commission on Monday last week by a 5-4 margin. The report was written by Anita Błochowiak, a Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) deputy famous for her inquisitive questions about the location of toilets and "horizontal channels of transport," as she described lifts. Samoobrona's (Self-defense) representative Jan Łączny and the non-affiliated Bohdan Kopczyński, formerly of the League of Polish Families (LPR), voted for the findings, while Józef Szczepańczyk of the Polish People's Party (PSL) was helpfully away in his constituency, fuelling speculation that a deal bringing the PSL back into the government coalition was on the cards.
The world of Polish politics is such a pleasant, friendly place, if you believe the report. Sure, there are those who are desperate to spoil the party. Take Tomasz Nałęcz, the commission chairman, who has recently defected from the SLD's coalition partner the Labor Union (UP) to the newly formed Polish Social Democracy (SdPl). Calling the results of the vote a "disgrace," he declined to present it to parliament, saying he was too ashamed of this "pack of lies." But he is easily dismissed as a traitor of the left.
So now everything is clear. Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz, the foreign minister who resigned over a leak of sensitive information from the ministry on the same day the report was passed, stays on, but only because the ministry needs continuity. Aleksandra Jakubowska, the head of the prime minister's chancellery, also stays on, until May 2 anyway, but in her case, it is because she did nothing wrong.
Both have had some trouble with hard disks - though that is where the similarities end. While the 'Cimoszewicz disks' contain secret service reports, diplomatic correspondence as well as secretaries' e-mails discussing the finer points of fashion, the minister is only indirectly responsible for the leak. Still, he did the decent thing and offered to resign.
With Jakubowska, there is only one disk and it doesn't contain any state secrets. Neither has it been leaked. On the contrary, rather than excessive 'transparency,' the scandal with Minister Jakubowska stems from too much secrecy.
As the deputy culture minister, she was in charge of the broadcasting act that Rywin had offered to sell. When the commission began uncovering serious irregularities in the legislative process, which made Rywin's offer possible, Jakubowska was promoted. Strange, maybe, but then there was no proof that she was responsible for anything other than negligence.
A messy lawmaker, Jakubowska apparently adheres to the highest standards of orderliness when it comes to leaving her desk, and computer, to her successor. She formatted the hard disk in her ministry computer. When the investigators recovered the lost data, it turned out to directly contradict some of the statements she had made under oath to the parliamentary commission.
It is hard not to see why Jan Rokita, a Civic Platform (PO) commission member, was flabbergasted by the commission's failure to name her as an accomplice of Rywin.
"Do I understand that we have concluded a madman approached Agora [about the bribe] and that [Prime Minister Leszek] Miller, Jakubowska... are all upright people, whose moral characters we commend to posterity?" he asked, listing the names of people heavily implicated in the scandal. When Tomasz Nałęcz, the chairman of the commission of the recently-formed Polish Social Democracy (SdPl), answered, "I am ashamed to say you are right," Rokita asked for a break, saying, "I need time to get my head around the concept."
And well he might. Sadly, there was no break for him. Neither are we likely to get a break from these people any time soon.
