Politicians.com
"As a political old-age pensioner I use the internet and communicators to stay in touch with society - I want to know what people think, what they are up to, what they are plotting," says Lech Wałęsa, Poland's former President.
He is not the only politician keeping in touch via the net. The web has become an important marketing tool for the candidates in the upcoming local elections. Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, former PM and Law and Justice's candidate for President of Warsaw, started writing a political blog in July.
On his blog Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz not only comments on current political events or describes his strategy for Warsaw, he also describes a night out in Sopot: "Now all I need is a discotheque. (I'm 47. Can I dance? Yes I can, I need to, I love to) and then I can go back to Warsaw, to work. In SPATiF I had the best time for a long time (all rules respected of course - dummies). Many pretty girls, good dancers as well," he writes. He also waxes philosophical, asking: "God - what is love? How should we experience it? How should we love?"
The League of Polish Families' candidate for Warsaw City Hall, Wojciech Wierzejski, has also become a keen blogger. But, like his live appearances, his online posts inspire controversy: "Among left-wing and liberal politicians as well as their media reviewers, the dominating groups are not just half-wits, but quarter-wits," he wrote.
Civic Platform's (PO's) candidate for Warsaw President, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, on the other hand, decided to stand out from the crowd. Her electoral team thought blogging has become passé. "If there's too much of something, it's just not pleasing to the eye anymore," Tomasz Andryszczyk from PO's press office told WBJ. But Gronkiewicz-Waltz hasn't given up on the web community altogether - she has joined networking platforms Grono.net and LinkedIn and soon it will be possible to have a chat with her on instant messenger Gadu-gadu.
One thing is sure - a modern electoral campaign cannot avoid such a powerful tool as the internet. To be successful candidates must reach voters through more than just the TV or the newspapers.
