Translated material
Ground Trap
Deputy Prime Minister of Poland fell victim to a special operation
“This is a scandal. I received a resignation decree from the hands not of the president, but of the minister of his office, Andrzej Draba,” the leader of the Polish populist Self-Defense party Andrzej Lepper (pictured) was indignant yesterday. On Monday, Polish President Lech Kaczynski removed him from his post as deputy prime minister and agriculture minister. Contrary to the ceremony, the decree was presented to the retiree not publicly, but in the quiet of the working premises of the presidential administration.The authorities explained Lepper's resignation due to his involvement in a corruption scandal. The politician denies his connection with corrupt officials and accuses the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau of Poland (CAB), created by the Kaczynski brothers' Law and Justice (PiS) party, of “deliberate political provocation.” Lepper demanded that substantial evidence of the charges be presented to him by Friday. Until then, Self-Defense will remain in the government coalition, but tomorrow Mr. Lepper may change this decision.
The head of the Central Antimonopoly Service, Mariusz Kaminski, admitted yesterday that his agency conducted a special operation at the Ministry of Agriculture to identify corrupt employees. Back in January, forged letters from the local authorities of Mrągowo, prepared for the Central Bank, were sent to the ministry with a request to change the use of farmland for the construction of a large cottage village. The papers were specially prepared with legal inaccuracies that would not have allowed the transaction to be carried out legally. Last week, two of Lepper's assistants were arrested for allegedly agreeing to re-register the land for a bribe of $1 million. Pan Kaminski refused to confirm that the special operation was aimed specifically at Lepper and to make public documents describing this operation. According to the publications of the influential Polish newspapers Dziennik and Rzeczpospolita, the TsAB operation involved “advanced wiretapping technologies” and fabricated documents.
Lepper demanded that the relevant committees of the Sejm look into the situation. He is convinced that his opponents have "discredited him as the leader of the party and a possible presidential candidate in the upcoming 2010 elections." In 2005, he already ran for president, but finished third. Lech Kaczynski won, and his twin brother Jaroslaw became prime minister. Yesterday, the prime minister rejected Lepper’s accusation of provocation, saying that the arrest of corrupt officials was carried out as part of a legitimate investigation, and no one thought that “the trail would lead to Lepper.”
Leading researcher at the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Nikolai Bukharin, emphasized to Vremya Novostei, “that the situation seems incomprehensible to the Polish population and even to the majority of Polish politicians.” Populist Lepper is always in sight. He gets into scandals, criticizes the Kaczynski brothers for their willingness to deploy elements of the American missile defense system, demands a referendum on this issue and opposes the Polish veto on EU negotiations with Moscow. However, our interlocutor does not believe in Mr. Lepper’s pro-Russian sympathies: “While speaking out for good relations with Russia, he was a member of the most anti-Russian government in Poland in the last 15 years.” Informed sources of VN also doubted the version of Lepper’s dismissal for friendship with Moscow, because at the beginning of the summer the politician signed an agreement within the framework of the coalition, according to which Self-Defense pledged not to interfere with the course of the authorities. Given this commitment, Lepper's "dissidence" was unlikely to pose a serious problem for the Kaczynski brothers.
The decision of Self-Defense to remain in the ruling coalition with the ruling party Law and Justice and the national Catholic League of Polish Families (LPS) could remove the issue of dissolving parliament and early elections. But the parliamentary opposition, represented by the influential senator from the Civic Platform (CP) party Stefan Neselovsky, has already called for the resignation of the entire cabinet of ministers, including the prime minister, if the corruption version of the scandal is confirmed.
It is possible that a new government will be formed in Poland under the current parliament; this work may take a month and a half. If early elections are held, Self-Defense and LPS, according to sociologists, risk being among the losers. These parties clearly do not need early elections. “PiS will win the elections. But this does not mean that she will come to power in the country again: she will not have the opportunity to form a new coalition,” the expert believes. Besides PiS, only the State Party and the bloc of Polish Social Democrats with centrists led by ex-President Aleksander Kwasniewski will probably get into the new Sejm, VN’s interlocutor believes. This means that Mr. Lepper has reason to temporarily forget his political grievance and leave his party in the Sejm. There will be no early elections - there will be no threat of failure of the controversial politician’s “Self-Defense” in them.