The circus returns
By Aleksander Nowacki
Fresh from its summer hiatus, the commission of inquiry established to uncover the details of the Lew Rywin bribery scandal turned its attention to a more esoteric issue last week: How satisfying is it for a woman to work on the details of a new parliamentary bill?
The answer to this odd question turns out to be "not at all," as the commission heard on Tuesday from Ewa Ziemi-szewska, director of the legal department at the Culture Ministry, who was responsible for the technical details of the controversial Radio and TV Broadcasting Act - the piece of legislation that has led to the biggest domestic political scandal since the fall of communism.
Civic Platform (PO) deputy Jan Rokita (he dropped his feminine middle name Maria during his holiday in Egypt) shared with the public his failure to be surprised by Ziemiszewska's response. Given Rokita's track record of always being surprised, this statement sent shock waves across the nation. So far, Rokita has been surprised by most of the witnesses' testimonies; indeed, by almost anything that has happened in connection with the Rywingate bribery scandal.
Rokita spent most of last week being surprised at the proceedings of the public prosecutor's office regarding the Rywingate scandal. Not least among the causes for his astonishment was the fact that the supposedly complete case files, made available to the commission after many months of legal wrangling, did not contain any prosecutors' notes. "Does that mean that they did not think anything about any aspect of the case?" the deputy wondered. In this he was joined by Law and Justice (PiS) deputy Zbigniew Ziobro, famous now for being the target of Prime Minister Leszek Miller's "you are a zero" quip.
Ziobro, in fact, listed a number of specific grounds for surprise. These, he said, range from the prosecutors' failure to protect the integrity of the evidence to a preconceived assumption by prosecutors that Lew Rywin was acting alone in offering to sell the details of a parliamentary act to media firm Agora for $17.5 million.
The astonished politicians-cum-investigators requested that the prosecutors overseeing the investigation testify in front of the commission. Should their motion be rejected by Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) commission members, who form a majority on the commission, the minority opposition faction would be obliged to "offer their own unfavorable evaluation of the work of the prosecutor's office."
So don't be surprised if Rokita's negative evaluation comes to a TV set near you over the next week or so, as the motion has been duly rejected.
"I have some fundamental questions to ask them," raged the deputy, though to no avail. Commission chairman Tomasz Nałęcz of the pro-government Labor Union (UP) party suggested that Rokita could state what he would have asked the prosecutors, had they been called to appear. "I will not talk to empty chairs," was Rokita's angry response. Partisan observers have been heard to remark that talking to chairs might have the same effect as trying to win over pro-government members of the commission.
