No clean hands
By Aleksander Nowacki
What are the uses of this country's first-ever parliamentary commission of inquiry? Finding out the truth about the biggest corruption scandal in democratic history is not one of them, say more than two thirds of Poles, according to a public opinion survey released last week. Earlier surveys of this kind found that the majority of the population believe Lew Rywin was acting on behalf of the now-legendary "group which holds the power" when he attempted to extort a bribe from the Agora media group. Most people are also convinced that the actual make-up of the group will never be known.
Analogies with Watergate, so trumpeted by Agora's Gazeta Wyborcza when the scandal was first made known to the public, fall flat for that very reason: without a Nixon, there can be no Watergate. That is not, however, to say that the commission has proven to be a failure in all respects.
Many will point to the entertainment value of the commission's televised proceedings. But even that aside, the commission still emerges as a positive phenomenon. Half of those polled say that it has increased their knowledge of the actual condition of the State. It is easy to see how that has happened. Had it not been for the commission, only the initiated few would have known of the incredible number of irregularities in the legislative process that played into Rywin's hands. In addition, the media attention generated by the investigation has undoubtedly contributed to the number of corruption scandals that are being revealed almost by the day. Some are even talking of a snowball effect, hoping that by small steps, the country is edging closer to a general crackdown on corruption on a scale similar to the "Clean Hands" campaign that nearly purged Italy of corrupt politicians in the 1990's.
That, however, is another misleading analogy. Even as more and more improprieties are coming to light, and corrupt individuals are facing criminal investigations, one concept is singularly lacking that would make the purging of this country's political class possible. That is the notion of political responsibility.
Internal Affairs Minister Krzysztof Janik is widely seen as an honest and well-meaning man, even by his political opponents. He is also known as the man to preside over the most disastrous police operation in recent history, which cost the lives of three police officers. Many of his closest aides were forced to resign after being found to break the anti-corruption law. His most important deputy, Zbigniew Sobotka, has been suspended after charges of obstructing the course of justice and endangering the lives of police officers were brought against him in connection with the Starachowice scandal. The chief of the police resigned when his mutually contradictory statements to the prosecutors on Sobotka's role in the scandal revealed him to be lying under oath. Yet, Minister Janik is here to stay. When Parliament voted last week on the motion of no confidence to the minister, Prime Minister Leszek Miller described the motion as "wasting our time." Enough said.
