Scandalmania!
By Mirko Kaupat
History shows that when some event hits the news, soon after surprisingly many things of the same kind occur again and again. After a strong earthquake, for example, you read about new earthquakes somewhere in the world almost every day. When there is a horrendous train crash, the following week's papers are full of train crashes, and people keep asking: How is it that there are so many railway accidents right now? In fact, in most cases the number of earthquakes or accidents isn't higher at all; the media are simply paying more attention to them, because the issue is temporarily high on the agenda.
It seems that the same phenomenon applies to the scandals rocking this country's political scene. Every day the papers report on corruption, legal violations and dirty businesses. Certainly few people doubt that these things happen here, but on the other hand, after the Rywin and Łapiński scandals, there seems to be a kind of "scandalmania" taking place among journalists. Suddenly it's fashionable to uncover scandals.
Following the controversy surrounding Sejm deputy Andrzej Jagiełło, who warned two of his mafia-linked party colleagues in Starachowice of a police raid, there are other people in the headlines now: Interior Minister Krzysztof Janik's chief advisor, Janusz Ocipka, was accused by Rzeczpospolita of having violated the anti-corruption law. Ocipka is the co-owner of some private enterprises while at the same time working for the ministry. Furthermore, his companies are said to owe a large amount of money to the State Treasury. Though Ocipka denies the latter, he acknowledged his conflict of interest and resigned. But this wasn't the end of Minister Janik's problems. "Shouldn't he have known about this?" the papers asked. To worsen the situation for the minister, the media unveiled that he was even a supervisory board member at one of Ocipka's companies back in 1995. This was a wholesale embarassment for Janik, as it was he who had presented a new draft of a stricter anti-corruption law just a few days before the scandal broke out. The opposition, of course, immediately demanded Janik's resignation.
Additionally, it now appears that the informer who helped tip off Andrzej Jagiełło's colleagues about a police raid also works in Janik's ministry. One of the suspects is Deputy Minister Zbigniew Sobotka. Sobotka again found himself in the middle of a controversy when it was revealed recently that a former advisor of his had broken the corruption law.
Next came the story of a drunken SLD Sejm deputy from the Puławskie region, who died in a car accident after partying with senior members of the local police and court staff. With politicians now being framed not only as white-collar criminals, but as dangerous drunkards, scandalmania appears to be reaching new lows.
All the excitement surrounding these and many other stories has one advantage: No one who plots illegal or dubious acts can feel safe any more. The domestic press has begun to fulfil its task as a "democracy watchdog." That's the good news. The bad news, however, is that people might not see this positive effect, and rather come to the conclusion that all politicians are corrupt. The downside may be that the public will turn its back on politics altogether.
