War on the home front

The war is gathering pace. The number of casualties is increasing every day. Everyone is confused as to what is really going on. Rumours abound as to what will happen next. Yes, the war between the president and the prime minister really is fierce.

The president fears that this government's weakness could lead to the referendum on European Union accession being lost. That would spell disaster for the country and also for his place in the history books. He led the country into NATO and now wants to lead it into the EU. This is why the president has launched a preemptive strike against the prime minister.

The blitzkrieg began with a volley of shots fired off in a Rzeczpospolita interview last weekend. In it the president made explicitly clear that he expected the prime minister to do the honourable thing. In the past this scene would involve him leaving a pistol and waiting outside to hear the shot being fired. The commander had failed in battle and had become embroiled in a scandal to boot, and it was time to face the music.

Like the Iraqis, Leszek Miller has refused to roll over and die. He soon launched a retaliatory strike. The president's men had always feared that the prime minister had a secret supply of weapons of mass destruction hidden away for a very rainy day. Out came the note or letter which Lew Rywin had given to Aleksander Kwaśniewski at the end of July. The note makes clear the involvement of Robert Kwiatkowski and is a thinly veiled attempt to get the president to try and persuade Adam Michnik to drop the whole corruption angle. The prime minister, in an interview with public TV, gleefully revealed that the president knew even more about the Rywin affair than he, and cited the note as evidence.

The problem with the use of weapons of mass destruction is that they hit your own side too. By revealing the note, Miller has effectively ensured that Kwiatkowski will face perjury charges for telling the investigative commission that he knew nothing about Rywin's approach to Michnik, and he will have to leave the lucrative job as chief of TVP.

A MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) scenario is threatening to engulf all the antagonists. It really will be very difficult for the president to retain his image of being "above it all." His call for politicians to be more careful in their dealings with business really would have been more convincing had he himself been more careful. Unfortunately, when it comes to contacts with the world of business, Kwaśniewski pointing accusing fingers at others is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

President Kwaśniewski has for years maintained very close relations with businessmen. He has received very expensive gifts from them (such as the Wojciech Kossak painting bought for him by a group of his political and business friends). Rywin obviously knew him well enough to feel that the note he wrote could have some influence on him. The president is a very sociable man and finds it hard not to exchange gestures of friendship.

It really is hard now to understand how this crisis was allowed to happen. Both the prime minister and the president, and even Michnik, could have prevented it by reporting the matter to the public prosecutor in due time. But the moment the story came out, five months after the event, a major scandal engulfing the whole elite was inevitable.

All attempts to contain the raging fire have so far failed. The appointment of the investigative commission and the charges pressed against Rywin have simply fanned the flames. Attempts to point accusing fingers at people like Włodzimierz Czarzasty, the secretary of KRRiTV, and Kwiatkowski have simply increased the calls for other more senior figures to be investigated.

Now the note from Rywin to Kwaśniewski has drawn into the whole sad affair the country's most popular and accomplished politician.

The SLD troops are shell shocked and disoriented. Their commanders are doing battle, and the country is plunging ever deeper into political chaos. There will be no winners in this war, only casualties. The fallout could yet wipe the governing party off the political landscape and bring us years of turmoil and uncertainty as to who is running the country.

Instead of the liberation day of EU accession, we may see the sight of people in red and white ties running our ministries.