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October 30, 2007
Brave Sir Robin
The prosecutors in Poland's most highly politicised prosecution service (Warsaw) have had enough. Exclamation mark. They are rebelling. Exclamation mark. Nine or ten of them are resigning over the political interference in their work of putting criminals where they belong. Oh yes. Up with this they will no longer put.
It's pretty easy to resign, put you career on the line, stand up for the principle of separation of the executive and judiciary etc etc etc after the government that was doing the interfering has been roundly defeated in a general election. They're not fooling anyone.
Posted by hgrodsk at 05:34 PM | Comments (0)
October 25, 2007
Poland is Modern
Word comes my way of a book by the name of There’s an Egg in my Soup by one Tom Galvin describing his experiences as an Irishman in Poland. It sounds awful but that may well be the fault of the publicity machinery behind the book. Here’s the cliché ridden summary on the publisher’s website:
Queues for groceries, unfathomable bus timetables, inexplicable traditions and truly bizarre soup – this is Poland in the mid-1990s, where Tom Galvin innocently went as a trainee teacher… Tom spent five years dealing with long and freezing winters, lack of good food, loneliness and hardship, as he discovered the misery as well as the joy of Polish life. He returned in 2007, to find surprising changes to the country that had been his home for the first years of his working life.Queues, bad food and hardship – ah yes, brings back memories. To be sure – of the eighties, not the nineties, but perhaps his publishers have picked up the Polish authors’ fascination for accurate detail: how else could Mr. Galvin have spent five years here in the mid 90s and only return in 2007? I might add here that Polish bus timetables, despite recent slips in standards, are models of clarity and accuracy especially compared to the miserable specimens on display (sometimes) in roaring, modern Ireland.
Galvin is also ill-served by Bridget Hourican’s lazy, preening ("my own Grand Tour was spent in St Petersburg and Budapest") review in the Irish Times. She spills the out-of-date clichés too:
“Your bathroom's full of cockroaches? I have to share a communal loo.”
“bread queues and unravelling Orwellian bureaucracies out east”
“For five years he lived in an apartment with no TV” (the horror! The horror! Next we’ll be hearing that he had no car!)
Which brings me to my point: Poland is a thriving, thrusting, dynamic, modern state. Socially, culturally and aesthetically, it could not be further away from the stereotypes peddled in the west. As this clip from a popular TV show will demonstrate:
Posted by hgrodsk at 04:12 PM | Comments (6)
October 23, 2007
What do they be teaching the young ones
I don't know. Actually, I do: administration and marketing with some broken English in case a multi-national corporation should become aware of your existence and deign to give you a job. How different things were in 1918, when I was a boy, taking my school leaving exam with Aleksander Wat. I won't divulge my own results but here's what young master Wat got:
Polish (language and literature): 3 (barely passed)
Kosmografia: 4 (the scale goes to 5)
Higiene: 4
Posted by hgrodsk at 12:06 PM | Comments (0)
October 22, 2007
What a Night!
The people of Poland woke up this morning slightly dazed, slightly confused, by the million-strong army of industrious party activists who were busily engaged in removing and ecologically disposing of the election campaign posters that had appeared over the last six weeks of intense but cheerful campaigning.
Battered but proud, ex-prime minister Jarosław Kaczyński spoke to the reporters assembled at PiS headquarters as he struggled into his high-visibility overalls: "We didn't make it but the important thing is - as a tough opposition party - to clean up this mess which the democratic process necessarily entails. I congratulate Donald Tusk and look forward to meeting him today on the [main Warsaw road] Trasa Łazienka as we take down our pictures." He quipped: "Donaldek will be working up the right hand side of the street while I will be on the left." His brother, Lech Kaczyński, president of Poland, will not be joining in the clean-up effort as the constitution forbids the president from interfereing in the democcratic process of elections.
There was jubiliation in the PO HQ. Donald Tusk, heavy-duty wire-snippers in hand, was carried shoulder high to the first lamp post on the left as you walk out of the building and triumphantly cut loose a large paste-board image of himself. To a chanting, clapping crowd he turned and said: "So that life will be better. For Everyone." Taking their cue from the probable next-prime minister of Poland, some two hundred activists, young and old, flooded down the street, tearing tatty cardboard and paper election posters from the crash barriers on the central median. This was no time for narrow party-political interests. PiS, LiD and PSL posters were also removed by the enthusiastic volunteers as a team of professional outdoor advertising specialists took down a giant poster of losers Zyta Gilowska, Zbigniew Ziobro, Zbigniew Religa and Jarosław Kaczyński from an enormous billboard, replacing them with a picture of a bag of crisps.
Ziobro himself, although his right arm is in a cast, was on hand. "The injured hand didn't prevent me from posing for the cameras as I cast my vote," he said. "So why would it prevent me from doing this civic duty either?"
Posted by hgrodsk at 07:35 AM | Comments (0)
October 19, 2007
The Revolving Door
According to the latest Polityka Rafał Antczak has a new job. Antczak was one of the three authors of an article in Gazeta Wzborcza about how we can't afford to be so rich. I was later able to reveal (i.e. I read the paper) that the think tank Antczak worked for (CASE) received funding from insurers PZU - Antczak's new employer.
And while I'm at it, here's the font of wisdom, in March 2005, carefully selecting his examples in his contribution to the debate on the movement of Polish workers and the EU:
It's worth remembering what happened with previous enlargements [of the EU]. Portuguese and Spanish people returned from emigration to take advantage of the dramatic economic growth in their countriesAs of course did Irish people - twenty five years after Ireland joined the EEC.
Posted by hgrodsk at 03:29 PM | Comments (0)
Entrapment
Yesterday’s entry on Beata Sawicka’s corruption charges was a little hurried. Here, for those with strong stomachs, is the sleazy story in more detail. In January 2007 the CBA (Anti-Corruption Office) agent meets Sawicka on a training course. He poses as the representative of a western property developer. On October 1st Sawicka is arrested for accepting a bribe to rig the sale of a plot of land in Hel (northern Poland). The land was not yet for sale; there was no “plan zagospodarowania” (development plan); no tendering process had been announced and none was planned; no authentic businessmen had expressed any interest in the land. In short, the whole thing was a set-up. The mayor of Hel also got caught up in the affair: he would have known straight off what the legal status of the land in question was.
On October 15th Primesident Kaczyński complains that somehow little has been heard about the corruption of – oh, what’s this her name is? – Sawicka. (She herself had not gone public since her arrest.) Next day Kamiński of the CBA called the press conference in which he revealed the details of the investigation (bugged conversations, video of the bribe transfer). Among Sawicka’s words is mention of the possibility of cashing in on the privatisation of hospitals. PiS at this time is running ads saying (incorrectly – as has been decided in court) that PO plan to privatise the public health service, including even emergency help. Sawicka is also shown making references to corruption to a PO member (since identified as Wojciech Picheta). Picheta is booted out of PO and later says he regarded Sawicka’s words as „science fiction” which in view of the fact that the hospital up for privatisation that Sawicka mentioned is already private, may well be true. (Also, PiS has not been slow to privatise individual hospitals either.) Kamiński insists that the CBA undercover man did not enter into an intimate relationship with Sawicka: it was all strictly business. He also finds it necessary to point out during the show that this is a good indicator of who to vote for. Next day Sawicka goes public, as described below. The CBA man, she says, totally turned her head, sending her flowers and letters, exchanging presents with her….
Pitera, a party colleague, claims that Sawicka had mentioned to her her suspicion that she was being spied on by the ABW (another bunch of spooks in Poland) and asks why a woman with such suspicions would talk so openly on the telephone about corruption.
There's more, but I have to go now, and tomorrow it is illegal to engage in electioneering. Which of course I'm not doing. Unlike the secret police.
Posted by hgrodsk at 11:26 AM | Comments (0)
October 18, 2007
Pre-Election Sleaze
Where to begin? Beata Sawicka, an opposition party deputy was caught red-handed by the CBA (Anti-Corruption Office) a week or two ago accepting a bribe in connection with the sale of land. A CBA man had gone undercover as a developer and elicited the bribe from Sawicka in an operation that lasted months and months – oh, years, perhaps – but which for operational / police procedural reasons had to be brought to fruition just before a general election.
But this time the ruling party – err, the CBA – may have overplayed its hand. Beata Sawicka did not go quietly. Nor has she committed suicide. CBA chief Mariusz Kamiński held a press conference a few days ago in which he displayed the video evidence and replayed a bugged telephone conversation between Sawicka and Person Unknown.
At this, Sawicka had a noisy and public nervous breakdown. She appealed, sobbing, to Kamiński - by name - not to engage in lynch justice, to permit her a fair trial and not to reveal any more of her private life to the court – of public opinion, that is. She wondered why the evidence shown to the public did not include the tender SMS messages sent her over the months by the undercover man. She was taken off to hospital.
The suggestion is, in short, that a weak person was seduced / manipulated by the secret services in order to score political points. One of the most unedifying scenes of the past week was Primesident Kaczyński pretending to have difficulty remembering the name of the opposition party candidate that his secret services had had arrested.
But even the stoniest hearted Mohair Beret may have been affected by the TV images of a woman seduced, duped, destroyed and abandoned in a sordid political ploy.
Posted by hgrodsk at 12:08 PM | Comments (0)
October 14, 2007
Worth Quoting
Here's Sławomir Sierakowski in the latest Polityka:
In a country where according to official statistics more than half of Poles live below the social minimum but discussion of economics usually begins with the flat tax and always ends with lowering taxes populists are bound to win.
Posted by hgrodsk at 12:10 PM | Comments (0)
October 13, 2007
The Journalist's Art
Gazeta Wyborcza has a regular feature in which they ask the same set of questions about tourism of various people. You know the type: "I left my heart in... [answer]"; "My best holidays were in... [answer]"; "My favourite hotel... [answer]." This week the respondent was a Daria Pawęda, described as a journalist and traveller. Her answers to the questions read like an encyclopaedia entries: "Easter Island. Belonging to Chile, it is famous for its circa 900 statues, the so-called Moai, laid out on stone platforms known as ahu."
For a journalist, she has an awfully limited vocabulary. The island of Bequia is known, she says, as the "hidden treasure of the Caribbean." It is "a paradise for sailors and divers." But what's this? Her most unforgettable day was spent "on a paradise beach" in Phu Quoc. Her best holidays were in Jericoacoara, which she regards as "a paradise on Brazilian earth, hidden from the world." She is that most tiresome of person - the tourist who has sought and found places unknown to you. (Phu Quoc is also far off the beaten track.) Or so she would have you believe. In answer to the question of what she always brings with her on her journeys, she says the Lonely Planet Guide. And Jericoacoara beach, that untouched paradise on earth, unknown to plebs like you with your Ryanair tickets? It's only in the Washington Post's top ten beaches in the world.
My favourite, though, is her motto, which -- seasoned world traveller that she is -- she gives not in boring old Polish, but in cool and snappy cosmopolitan English: "Happiness is journey, not destination."
Posted by hgrodsk at 06:01 PM | Comments (0)
October 11, 2007
Lucifer is in the Details
Aleksander Wat was a precocious young fellah. He wrote “JA z jednej strony i JA z drugiej strony mego mopsożelaznego piecyka” (I from one side and I from the other side of my little herring-iron oven) at the age of 14 and a short story “Lucifer Unemployed” in his early 20s. With a title like that, he should have known about the devil being in the details. But he didn’t.
The story has a great idea – Lucifer finds he has nothing to do in the twentieth century because humans have created a hell on earth – but the execution is rather dull and the young Wat was too clever by half. My annotated edition finds it necessary to explain “Ich bin der Geist, der stets verneint;” who Pyram, Tysbe, Zalmoksis and Tertulian (Polish spellings) were; what an “inkluz” is; what the word “mimikrycznie” means (from the English “mimic”) and the nature of Orygenes’s heresy. Also, he seems to have difficulty distinguishing between first and third person narrative. One passage starts with a direct quote “‘Czym jest moje serce…’” (What is my heart…) but lapses into the third person half way through: “‘Gośc zaszył się…’” (The guest settled into…)
But to the detail: Lucifer goes to Rome to meet some bishop. A “Miss Cyrce” (geddit? – it’s in the notes at the back if you don’t) drops him off and waits “in the street for his return in a beautiful Hispano-Suiza” (even then (1927) Poles were fond of dropping brand names). Lucifer meets the bishop, who tells him to come back in three days. This he does. And then, cool as a cucumber, this bombshell: “Miss Cyrce, oczekująca Lucyfera w samochodzie…” (Miss Cyrce, waiting for Lucifer in her car…) For three days? Alright, maybe she drove Satan to the bishop on the third day, having spent the intervening days turning Greek sailors into pigs, but we are told that on that fateful day Satan walked to the bishop. (“Wieczorem tego dnia przyszedł szatan.” (On the evening of the third day Satan came [on foot].)
Posted by hgrodsk at 07:44 AM | Comments (0)
October 10, 2007
Comprehensive Guide to Polish Popular Music
"Rockman" is a word in the Polish language.
Posted by hgrodsk at 03:52 PM | Comments (1)
October 09, 2007
O'Brien Leads, Sosnowski Follows
A character called Jakub Sosnowski has gone into business in Poland selling cog notes for ignoramuses. That is: you pay him and he tells you what such and such a book is about or what such and such a record is like. In this way you can shine at social gatherings to which you have been invited thanks to your stupendous new wealth rather than your depths of culture and sophistication.
Irish writer Flann O'Brien was on to this back in the 1920s or 30s. He offered a book-reading service. For a fee he would so mangle a book as to make it look like you had actually read it. For a higher fee he would underline passages, break the spine, add comments in the margins...
O'Brien was satirising snobbery but there is no suggestion that Sosnowski is anything other than a businessman. But save your money. If you want to know what to think of, for example, this year's "Nike" award winner, Traktat o łuskaniu fasoli (Treatise on Shelling Beans) by Wiesław Myśliwski you can always avail of the services of myself.
Posted by hgrodsk at 11:33 AM | Comments (1)
October 05, 2007
Editors and Authors
"Sometimes publishers get texts which have not been properly read, even by their own authors - books in a terrible state," says editor Filip Modrzejewski in this week's Polityka. It's worse than that, Mr. Modrzejewski. Sometimes readers get books that even the authors haven't read.
The picture painted in the article is dispiriting. For one thing, Monika Sznajderman (a publisher) fears that the profession is a dying one. For another, editing Jerzy Pilch's books gave Antoni Libera the urge to start writing for himself. The result was Madame.
Posted by hgrodsk at 12:19 PM | Comments (0)
October 04, 2007
Who Cares Who Spies?
Poor Gazeta Wyborcza. Your heart has to go out to them. They must feel like they're banging their heads off a brick wall in there. Today's lead story is about how the Polish National Insurance is about to open up its records on 25 million Poles to the CBA (Central Anti Corruption Bureau, in reality a kind of adjunct of the State television service). And they must have known as they went to press that this shock revelation will make no difference at all to the voters.
Posted by hgrodsk at 03:32 PM | Comments (0)
A Sea Change in Polish Politics
The signs are unmistakeable. All over the land it is evident that Polish politicians have shaken off the complexes and shackles of yesteryear. The East is awake! The last time I saw election posters here almost every single photograph of the candidate had the very top of his or her head cropped by the photographer. And now look around! By a miracle, their head tops have been restored. Presumably the PR agency that advised every single politician last time out in the country has been taken off the case.
In other political news, there was a televised debate between the prime minister, Kaczyński, and the leader of LiD (Lewica i Demokracja), Kwaśniewski. The politicians were unremarkable but some of the questions, put to them by journalists, were of interest. A Joanna Wrześniewska-Zygier started things off by moaning about the red tape involved in setting up a business. "When will we see an end to this socialism?" she asked of Kwaśniak. 18 years after Poles overthrew communism, public figures are still blaming the faults of modern Poland on the old regime. Wrześniewska-Zygier herself, in her interminably long question, compared the current situation unfavourably with that existing in communist Poland. So the red tape - by her own admission - is a feature of modern, capitalist Poland. And yet she gets to call it "socialism" unchallenged. Later on, Krzysztof Skowroński asked the two debaters what the difference was between the third and the fourth Polish Republics. In case there is any confusion here, allow me to explain: there is no such thing as a fourth Polish Republic. Post 1989 Poland is the third Republic and there has been no break in continuity since 1989. This "fourth republic" is a rhetorical device used by the current regime. Why must journalists so unquestioningly accept the terms of discourse set out for them by their rulers?
Posted by hgrodsk at 03:12 PM | Comments (3)
Grunt Killed, Important Person Injured
That's the message sent by both Dziennik and Gazeta Wyborcza today. The Polish ambassador to the Poland-occupied nation of Iraq was injured in an explosion. Someone else was killed. Here's the GW (electronic version, today):
W Bagdadzie bomby raniły polskiego ambasadora
Dwie lub trzy bomby wybuchły na trasie konwoju polskiej ambasady w Bagdadzie. Zginął funkcjonariusz BOR, ambasador Edward Pietrzyk jest ranny.Bombs in Baghdad Injure Polish Ambassador
Two or three bombs exploded on the route of a Polish embassy convoy in Baghdad. A BOR officer died. Ambassador Edward Pietrzyk was injured.
The dead man is given a name in paragraph four.
Posted by hgrodsk at 03:02 PM | Comments (0)
October 03, 2007
Less Panic
Poland has agreed after all to allow international observers inspect its elections. They are trying to say it was all a big mistake caused by the incompetence of the minister for foreign affairs. She is pretty incompetent, though, so it might even be true.
Posted by hgrodsk at 03:42 PM | Comments (1)