Troubles not at an end for Jasiński

Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz has set up a team of experts to evaluate candidates for the bodies of state-owned companies nominated by the Treasury Minister.

The group consists of 12 economists with managerial experience - including eight professors specializing in different sectors of the economy. The team also includes: the first president of the Warsaw Stock Exchange, Wiesław Rozłucki; the president of BOT, Poland's largest energy producer, Paweł Skowroński; and the Prime Minister's economic adviser, Marek Zuber.

As Marcinkiewicz said after his first meeting with the experts, he hopes the group will contribute to the introduction of high standards and transparent practices in managing companies owned by the State Treasury. The group will present an opinion on every candidate's qualifications, but it will not have any powers to block the candidacy. The Treasury Minister and other Ministers as well as state-owned companies' supervisory boards will make independent decisions. 

Although the opinion group has no concrete powers, Zbigniew Chlebowski from the Civic Platform (PO) sees its establishment as proof that the Prime Minister has little confidence in the Treasury Minister, Wojciech Jasiński, who is close to the Kaczyński brothers. "The Prime Minister has lost trust in the Minister if he established a group that is to evaluate the Treasury Minister's candidates," Chlebowski said. PO plans to submit a motion for a no-confidence vote in Jasiński, and has  accused him of stopping privatization and putting unsatisfactory candidates linked to Law and Justice (PiS) onto state companies' management boards.

The PO motion is unlikely to succeed as it would need 231 votes to dismiss Jasiński, and PiS and its coalition partners see no need to recall the Minister. But that doesn't discourage PO. "We treat our motion as a chance for public debate and to reveal the pathology during the nominations of members of the boards of state-owned companies," Chlebowski said.