When we were kings
When the now-tragically deceased Dutch populist Pim Fortuyn, who was openly gay, grabbed the headlines worldwide with an unexpected electoral victory, Lepper was said to be so keen to replicate his success as to contemplate coming out.
On a more serious, if hardly less exotic, note you might turn to the famous Roman orator Cato the Elder. For years, that venerable senator of the Roman Republic ended all his speeches, whose topics ranged from the provision of bread for the city's poor to anti-luxury laws, with a single phrase: "And I also think that Carthage must be destroyed." Ring a bell? Lepper concludes practically every single one of his speeches with an equally attention-grabbing catchphrase: "Balcerowicz must go." Whether Lepper is talking about the price of pig feed or about the Germans' evil plans to buy up Polish land, the name of the Central Bank president somehow always pops up. While it may be stretching the point a bit, the present writer finds it rather discomforting that in 146 BC Carthage was destroyed, its population killed or enslaved, and its ruins plowed over by the raptured listeners of Cato's speeches.
But while some of Andrzej Lepper's rhetorical devices have a documented history of more than two millennia, he also seems to draw his inspiration from times more recent and places farther away. When Jan Rokita, an outspoken and popular Civic Platform (PO) leader said last week that his party treated Samoobrona as its main rival he also added, "we are prepared to put up a fight," with the insurgent populists. Lepper was quick to seize the opportunity to try another old trick from the book.
"If Rokita wants to meet me in the ring, I'm ready," he said. "I practiced boxing to quite a high level in my time."
This is not the first time that a politician boasting of a career in boxing has challenged an opponent to a duel. Idi Amin, a bloody tyrant whose presidency in the 1970s made Uganda one of the world's poorest countries, famously invited Julius Nyerere, the then leader of Tanzania, to take him on in the ring. Idi Amin had been his country's heavyweight champion, so it was probably wise of the bespectacled Nyerere to decline the kind invitation. Rokita, a Kraków-educated lawyer with a penchant for extravagant hats and quoting Aristotle, seems likely to follow his example. If you are desperate enough to seek comfort from such parallels, the conclusion of the Amin boxing challenge was rather different to what he expected. Far from beating Nyerere to death, as Amin claimed he would, the Ugandan tyrant was driven out of his country by Tanzanian troops and died in comfort in Saudi Arabia last year.
Lepper as a boxer certainly makes sense. It is a nice coincidence that he recalled his days as an aspiring prizefighter around the same time that Andrzej Gołota, no doubt Lepper's hero, announced his comeback as a challenger for the world heavyweight title. The two men have much in common. Gołota is famous as a troublemaker, unable to resist the temptation to hit his opponents below the belt. That may not be such a bad description of Lepper's political style.
Instead of boxing, however, Lepper has for now settled to hold a debate with Rokita on the private radio station, Zet. The debate took place last Sunday, but its outcome was not yet known as the Business Journal went to press. A fistfight, however, seems a rather remote possibility. More likely, Lepper continued to call for Balcerowicz's dismissal and accused all his political rivals of corruption, pundits predicted. Rokita probably repeated his mantra of feeling the weight of responsibility for the country on his shoulders. Both opponents, however, likely agreed on one thing.
The Left Democratic Alliance (SLD) is no longer a serious political force, say both Lepper and Rokita. And this statement finds corroboration in the recent opinion polls that gave the SLD less than 10 percent support, while Samoobrona was up to 24 percent with the Civic Platform in the lead with 26 percent. The election of Krzysztof Janik, a former interior minister, to replace Leszek Miller at the helm of the SLD was widely seen as equal to a practical capitulation by the party. Short of a revolution, many prominent SLD members said nothing could save the party from becoming another Solidarity Election Movement (AWS), which led the country in 1997-2001 before winning less than five percent of the vote and disappearing from the political scene. As a result, a large number of the SLD's leaders are contemplating defection with a view to setting up a new party.
Marek Borowski, the speaker of the lower house of parliament, and former treasury minister Wiesław Kaczmarek appear likely to front the new force. But, if the party is to have any chance of success, its moving spirit will have to be President Aleksander Kwaśniewski. Without the support of the country's most popular politician, the center-left will simply give way to the two heroes of Sunday's radio debate.
On a more serious, if hardly less exotic, note you might turn to the famous Roman orator Cato the Elder. For years, that venerable senator of the Roman Republic ended all his speeches, whose topics ranged from the provision of bread for the city's poor to anti-luxury laws, with a single phrase: "And I also think that Carthage must be destroyed." Ring a bell? Lepper concludes practically every single one of his speeches with an equally attention-grabbing catchphrase: "Balcerowicz must go." Whether Lepper is talking about the price of pig feed or about the Germans' evil plans to buy up Polish land, the name of the Central Bank president somehow always pops up. While it may be stretching the point a bit, the present writer finds it rather discomforting that in 146 BC Carthage was destroyed, its population killed or enslaved, and its ruins plowed over by the raptured listeners of Cato's speeches.
But while some of Andrzej Lepper's rhetorical devices have a documented history of more than two millennia, he also seems to draw his inspiration from times more recent and places farther away. When Jan Rokita, an outspoken and popular Civic Platform (PO) leader said last week that his party treated Samoobrona as its main rival he also added, "we are prepared to put up a fight," with the insurgent populists. Lepper was quick to seize the opportunity to try another old trick from the book.
"If Rokita wants to meet me in the ring, I'm ready," he said. "I practiced boxing to quite a high level in my time."
This is not the first time that a politician boasting of a career in boxing has challenged an opponent to a duel. Idi Amin, a bloody tyrant whose presidency in the 1970s made Uganda one of the world's poorest countries, famously invited Julius Nyerere, the then leader of Tanzania, to take him on in the ring. Idi Amin had been his country's heavyweight champion, so it was probably wise of the bespectacled Nyerere to decline the kind invitation. Rokita, a Kraków-educated lawyer with a penchant for extravagant hats and quoting Aristotle, seems likely to follow his example. If you are desperate enough to seek comfort from such parallels, the conclusion of the Amin boxing challenge was rather different to what he expected. Far from beating Nyerere to death, as Amin claimed he would, the Ugandan tyrant was driven out of his country by Tanzanian troops and died in comfort in Saudi Arabia last year.
Lepper as a boxer certainly makes sense. It is a nice coincidence that he recalled his days as an aspiring prizefighter around the same time that Andrzej Gołota, no doubt Lepper's hero, announced his comeback as a challenger for the world heavyweight title. The two men have much in common. Gołota is famous as a troublemaker, unable to resist the temptation to hit his opponents below the belt. That may not be such a bad description of Lepper's political style.
Instead of boxing, however, Lepper has for now settled to hold a debate with Rokita on the private radio station, Zet. The debate took place last Sunday, but its outcome was not yet known as the Business Journal went to press. A fistfight, however, seems a rather remote possibility. More likely, Lepper continued to call for Balcerowicz's dismissal and accused all his political rivals of corruption, pundits predicted. Rokita probably repeated his mantra of feeling the weight of responsibility for the country on his shoulders. Both opponents, however, likely agreed on one thing.
The Left Democratic Alliance (SLD) is no longer a serious political force, say both Lepper and Rokita. And this statement finds corroboration in the recent opinion polls that gave the SLD less than 10 percent support, while Samoobrona was up to 24 percent with the Civic Platform in the lead with 26 percent. The election of Krzysztof Janik, a former interior minister, to replace Leszek Miller at the helm of the SLD was widely seen as equal to a practical capitulation by the party. Short of a revolution, many prominent SLD members said nothing could save the party from becoming another Solidarity Election Movement (AWS), which led the country in 1997-2001 before winning less than five percent of the vote and disappearing from the political scene. As a result, a large number of the SLD's leaders are contemplating defection with a view to setting up a new party.
Marek Borowski, the speaker of the lower house of parliament, and former treasury minister Wiesław Kaczmarek appear likely to front the new force. But, if the party is to have any chance of success, its moving spirit will have to be President Aleksander Kwaśniewski. Without the support of the country's most popular politician, the center-left will simply give way to the two heroes of Sunday's radio debate.
