Night reconciliation

The Polish party in power clings to power like Lenin

The issue of early parliamentary elections in Poland has been removed from the agenda. The ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has restored the coalition that collapsed miserably 25 days ago. On Tuesday night, President Lech Kaczynski, at the suggestion of his twin brother Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who heads the cabinet, appointed the leader of the radical left-wing “Self-Defense” Andrzej Lepper to the post of Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Agriculture, Andrzej Lepper, who acted as a rebel and disturber of political peace. The September resignation of Mr. Lepper was accompanied by mutual attacks: the prime minister called Lepper’s actions “quarrelsomeness,” while Lepper called Kaczynski’s speech “rudeness, rudeness and once again rudeness.”

After a program declaration taking into account mutual demands was signed between PiS (it is called the “party of the Kaczynski brothers”, although the formal chairman is Pan Jaroslaw), Self-Defense and the League of Polish Families, President Kaczynski expressed the hope that “ This put an end to the political crisis.” But few people believe in this, including the twins themselves. For the first time since the fall of communist power in Poland in 1989, the press was not allowed to attend a solemn act of such importance. From behind bars at the presidential palace, journalists were forced to point their cameras and voice recorders at limousines pulling up in the dark, prompting them to call the night's assignment a "shameful celebration."

The new issue of Newsweek-Polska magazine contains such a drawing. At the table with the samovar, Prime Minister Kaczynski, wearing a sailor suit, diligently takes notes on Vladimir Lenin. The leader of the world proletariat lectures the Polish prime minister: “You cannot give up the won power, Yaroslav!” Apparently, Pan Yaroslav has learned this and is holding on to power very tightly. The members of the shaky coalition tried in every possible way to stay in power and avoid the self-dissolution of the Sejm. Wanting to build a parliamentary majority, they resorted to sophisticated methods of political corruption.

On the very eve of the signing of the joint declaration, one deputy slipped away from the tight embrace of the party bosses, and there was no majority - the coalition accounts for 230 votes, that is, exactly half of the deputy corps. There is only one reserve left for recruitment: the schismatics and apostates who recently formed the new parliamentary faction “People’s Movement”. But they need to be attracted to something else - for example, by posts. Returning Lepper secured ministerial positions for his people, albeit without portfolios, in the security forces and government administration.

The opposition, primarily the liberal Civic Platform (CP) and the Union of Democratic Left Forces (SDLS), considers the coalition to be short-lived and has compromised itself. “You can’t bake any good bread for Poland from this flour,” Jerzy Szmajdzinski, one of the SDL leaders, figuratively put it. Grzegorz Szhetyna from the SOE calls the revived entity “a coalition of fear that is afraid of early elections because it will lose power.” Yesterday's opinion poll shows that if parliamentary elections had been held in the first half of October, the SOE would have won, with 35% of Poles voting for it. PiS would be in second place, with 22% support. The Sejm would also include “Self-Defense” and SDLS.

But this is nothing more than a conditional sociological hypothesis. The proposal of the GP and SDLS for the self-dissolution of parliament and early elections, which was put to a vote in the Sejm yesterday, did not pass. Only 182 deputies voted for this proposal, 243 deputies were against it.

Valery MASTEROV, staff correspondent for Moscow News in Warsaw, for Vremya Novostei