Translated material
Preemptive arrest
The Kaczynski twins are trying to cover up the scandalous wiretapping case
Yesterday in Poland the confrontation between the Kaczynski brothers and the opposition reached a new level . At 7:30 a.m. in Warsaw, employees of the Internal Security Agency arrested former Minister of the Interior Janusz Kaczmarek. This was followed by the arrests of his friend, the former head of the main commandant's office of the Polish police, Konrad Kornatowski, as well as the ex-head of the largest state insurance company PZU, Jaromir Netzel.Many in Poland have no doubt that there is an attempt by the twin brothers - President Lech Kaczynski and Prime Minister Jaroslaw - to stop the opposition's investigation into the facts of wiretapping , the collection of compromising evidence by the authorities on prominent politicians and surveillance of journalists. None other than ex-President of Poland Aleksander Kwasniewski suspects that he was bugged. “Even if there is only a feeling in the state that everyone is being monitored, this is already proof that something unhealthy is happening,” he emphasized. The leaders of Self-Defense and the League of Polish Families (LPS) Andrzej Lepper and Roman Giertych, as well as ex-Prime Minister of Poland Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, also came under the Kaczynski cap.
Yesterday it became known that those arrested were charged with an article providing for liability “for obstruction of justice.” The Warsaw District Prosecutor's Office explained: “They obstructed the investigation into the leak of information on an anti-corruption operation being prepared in the Ministry of Agriculture.” That is, Pan Kaczmarek is being taken revenge for warning Pan Lepper about a provocation being prepared against him. As a result, Kaczmarek thundered into retirement, and Pan Kornatovsky, who was arrested yesterday, and the head of the central investigative bureau, Yaroslav Majec, allegedly voluntarily left behind him.
After his resignation, Kaczmarek loudly accused the Kaczynski twins of “violations of the law and totalitarianism.” He spoke at a closed meeting of the Sejm, stunning the deputies with the facts of unlawful acts of the leaders of the ruling party under the eloquent name “Law and Justice” (PiS). Yesterday Mr. Kornatovsky was supposed to talk about the wiretapping to the parliamentary commission, and today they again hoped to see Mr. Kaczmarek.
But the twins played ahead. After all, what is at stake is not only the struggle for power, which PiS hopes to strengthen through early parliamentary elections, but also the danger of criminal prosecution if illegal actions of the authorities are proven. That is why the prime minister has already rejected the idea of dismissing the government if the Seimas refuses to dissolve itself, Nikolai Bukharin, a leading researcher at the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, explained to a Vremya Novostey correspondent.
It is noteworthy that Janusz Kaczmarek recently accepted the offer of the influential opposition party Civic Platform (CP) to stand as a candidate for the post of Prime Minister of the country. According to the scientist, in the event of early parliamentary elections, the State party “has a chance to get an absolute majority in the Sejm.” The question of self-dissolution will be raised in parliament on September 7, and the prime minister even hastened to announce the election date - October 21. Proposals to the Sejm to dissolve came from the State party, the “Union of Democratic Left Forces” of the late Barbara Blida (strange suicide during arrest in April) and PiS.
But the powers of the current deputies will expire only in the fall of 2009. And if they decide to retain their mandates, then the only way to hold early elections will be to vote on a vote of no confidence in the Kaczynski cabinet. Now this possibility is being explored by the tandem of “Self-Defense” and LPS. The opposition is united in its demand to create parliamentary commissions to investigate the participation of special services in the “Lepper case” and the death of Blida before the self-dissolution of the Sejm. PiS is opposed. “Prime Minister Kaczynski will do everything to ensure that the Sejm quickly ceases its activities. Neither he nor PiS need commissions and, accordingly, the promotion of campaigns fraught with criminal prosecution,” Mr. Bukharin summed up the situation for VN.