To sum up...
By Chris Mularczyk
As the summer holidays beckon and my time with the Business Journal comes to an end, it is time for a few conclusions on the political situation in the middle of the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD)'s term and on the eve of Poland's entry into the European Union.
Three topics have dominated my column over the past 12 months: corruption, EU accession and the quality of government. Here are a few concluding remarks on each one.
Let us take corruption first. This one will not go away. The press will keep on writing their stories and the politicians will keep saying something should be done about it. But nothing will. The reason lies in attitudes and culture. The attitude was best conveyed by Interior Minister Krzysztof Janik, who said "it will take generations." This is what most Poles say when asked about all sorts of social evils such as careless driving, dogs fouling footpaths or people spitting. When pointedly asked what they are doing to stop these things they say "there should be laws." When you remind them that these laws already exist, they revert to whining about it taking generations to change attitudes.
It is all an excuse for doing nothing, of course. If they were honest they would admit that corruption is something in which most people in Poland have been involved in one form or another. The culture of petty corruption flourished during the partition in the 18th and 19th centuries (in the Russian part of the country) and during the period of Soviet communism. The transformation simply gave new opportunities for mischief which have been used with great ingenuity.
There are those who expect EU membership to do much to tackle the problems of economic underdevelopment and corruption. On the economy they may well be right, as long as Poland finds the political will and executive energy to reform the public finances. On corruption it is far less likely. The EU member states wanted Poland in because of its 40-million market. For that reason alone it was worth closing one eye to the question of corruption and the state of the legal system. In any case, what has EU membership done about corruption for the likes of Italy? The passing of a law which gives the Italian prime minister immunity from prosecution is an indication of how little the EU can offer on that issue. Membership in the EU is indeed a historic opportunity but it is not the answer to all of Poland's problems. It will not change the national culture or mentality.
The third issue is the quality of government. To have an outside chance of good government, you need strong leadership and strong opposition. Here we have neither. The president runs up a ladder or off to Croatia at the slightest hint of trouble. The prime minister seems to have no economic views of his own and sees no other objective for himself other than staying in power. The opposition is so feeble that the governing party is able to govern comfortably even when it is a minority in Parliament.
The SLD dominates because it is the best-organized group, capable of influencing all parts of the political scene. The confidence vote in the Sejm showed it controls the Samoobrona party. It also demonstrated that the SLD still has influence over some in the Polish Peoples' Party (PSL), as four deputies disobeyed the PSL whip. But that is not the end of it. The SLD knows that, in a future Sejm, it could build an understanding with parts of the Civic Platform (PO), as some of the PO's leading activists were part of a coalition with the SLD in Warsaw for eight years, between 1994 and 2002. That leaves only the Kaczynskis' Law and Justice (PiS) and the ultra-Catholic Polish Families League (LPR) as parties over which the SLD has no control.
But the PiS and the LPR are unlikely to be strong enough to be able to form a government together. Nor are they a threat to the political scene, as they are dominated by attitudes adopted from the communist past and the Catholic Church. Only a party that could go beyond these obstacles and establish a credible economic and social agenda could pose a threat to the SLD. The SLD itself is only too aware of this and has therefore ensured the passing of three pieces of legislation that make establishing such a political force very unlikely:
a) The electoral law, which has a 5-percent threshold and uses the d'Hondt method for turning votes into seats, thus ensuring that you need 10 percent of the vote to get meaningful representation.
b) The law on political parties, which provides generous financial aid to those parties already in Parliament and places barriers in the way of those who want to stand as independent candidates.
c) The law on the non-profit sector, which gives the economy, labor and social policy minister the discretionary power to single-handedly decide which non-governmental organizations qualify for public funding and tax write-offs. That amounts to strong discouragement for any organization to engage in any opposition activity.
At least the SLD leaders are being consistent. In their former PZPR guise, they also tried to build a political scene to their liking with their own peasant party (ZSL), their own small-business party (SD), and their own Catholic organizations (PAX). They know how it's done and have simply skillfully adapted to the new pluralistic conditions. Control freaks they were, control freaks they are and control freaks they will remain.
