No more vetting blackmail

Katarzyna Marcinkowska: What significance does the government attach to the new vetting bill?

Przemysław Gosiewski: This bill is important as after the Constitutional Tribunal's verdict last year, vetting in its present shape has become useless. Every agent could first see their file and then write in a statement whether they collaborated or not, so such vetting was pointless. The only way to save vetting in Poland is to make the files public. Of course it concerns only people who hold public posts. We have accepted the model which was used in Germany and the Czech Republic, and we think it's right.

To what extent is vetting about finding the truth and to what extent is it about preventing former agents from wielding influence over current public life?

First of all, the goal is to put an end to blackmailing, to a number of unresolved situations. The case of Mrs Zyta Gilowska is an example. If all files were open today, we would be able to clear up matters very easily. How does the current situation look? The omudsman knows something, while the public and the person concerned know nothing, but a number of press articles all speculating differently have been written about Zyta Gilowska's collaboration. I think that disclosing the files, classifying private information, is extremely significant for the protection of the public interest. No blackmail will be possible then.

Won't such an exercise open a Pandora's box?

I don't think so. We have already learned quite a lot about those times. Still, Poland needs moral exoneration and collaborators should be stigmatized. We need to remember that it's not just about somebody having signed a pledge to cooperate - these people harmed other people. Knowledge gained by citizen A about citizen B was used to damage the life of the latter. Work was done to find out about somebody's weaknesses or marital problems and such knowledge was later used to blackmail people. If people who did things like this, often purely for financial gain, are still alive, they should be stigmatized.

Could innocent people be hurt by this process?

This concerns tens of thousands of people, so mistakes may happen. But practice has shown that their number is small. Since mistakes might be made, anyone who thinks they have been wrongly accused of collaboration will be able to stand up for their good reputation in court. Otherwise we wouldn't support and introduce this bill.