Roads to paradise
Poles like the month of May. The long May weekend always puts them in an optimistic mood and this year the joy should be doubled. The religious holiday of Corpus Christi falls on May 22, so another four-day weekend awaits us.
That makes the public opinion polls taken last week all the more surprising. The ruling Civic Platform (PO) party has seen its support drop by two percentage points. Moreover, I predict that it could drop again after the long weekend.
The premier loves us
"Love is the most important thing in life," Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk reminded us in a television address just before the start of the first long weekend in May. This same statement helped PO win the parliamentary elections back in November, made Tusk more popular and brought his opponents to their knees.
The words of the smiling, charming prime minister a few days before the holiday weekend were to have acted like magic on the Poles - let's cheer up. Enjoy love, enjoy life. Having received this message, Poles set off on their spring travels. They returned furious.
Emotional crisis
"But you said it would be different," "You lied," and "I don't trust you any more," are phrases which herald a crisis in a relationship. Poles seemed to have these exact words in their minds when they returned from the long weekend.
Over the weekend vehicles stood in traffic jams which stood for hours on Poland's poor and hole-riddled roads. The police recorded 631 accidents, in which 54 people were killed and 877 injured. Motorists' curses were accompanied by recollections of the prime minister's promises and assurances during the election campaign. Unfulfilled visions of Poland covered by hundreds of kilometers of ultramodern highways came back.
Meanwhile, the construction of this infrastructural paradise has not moved ahead in the last half year. A considerable part of PO's electorate, sports fans, are cursing because it is hard to imagine the Euro 2012 soccer championships being held while the main host cities are connected by bumpy, single-lane roads. Businesspeople - PO's main electorate - who have been waving their fists for a long time, repeated the mantra that the economic miracle will go unfulfilled without decent roads.
Give me one more chance…
Tusk's government realizes the seriousness of the situation and journalists are speculating that "heads will soon roll" at the Ministry of Infrastructure. The reason is not solely the delay in building highways, but also (and perhaps most importantly) delays in drafting the most important legislation - including a special roads law - which was to have shortened and facilitated infrastructure development.
Just as in love, Tusk's government is getting "one more chance." However, its partner - Polish society - is now waiting for concrete results rather than further declarations of love. If Tusk wants to save his government's reputation, then before the upcoming long weekend he should show, if only on paper, that there is a chance to implement the planned infrastructure projects.
Otherwise the public media, which is hostile to him, will point out that he went off with his wife on a week-long trip to South America instead of making sure his countrymen could get away for a weekend full of love. And although he did not have it easy - having flown for 21 hours in a venerable Tu-154M government aircraft, which had to land three times en route to take on fuel - perhaps Tusk reached his goal quicker than an average Pole travelling from Zakopane to Gdańsk.
Joanna Wóycicka is the former head of the foreign section of the Życie Warszawy and Życie newspapers and the former head of the foreign department at the Polish Press Agency (PAP). j.woycicka@hotmail.com
