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I still don’t think it’s a scandal but since it has driven everything (even Roman Polański) off the TV screens, here’s some more about the Zbig Chlebowski affair (see here), going mainly on Robert Walenciak’s article in the current Przegląd. The businessmen in question are Ryszard Sobiesiak of Casino Polonia and Golden Play and Jan Kosek of Casino Centrum ATT. The politicians in question are, at last count, Chlebowski, Drzewiecki, Schetyna, Szejnfeld, Czuma and Prime Minister Donald Tusk. The bill in question is one that would affect the gambling industry and has been working its way through the parliamentary system for months. One section of it proposes a “charge” on low-stake gambling machines (one-armed bandits) which is really just a tax. The PiS-friendly (more later) Central Anti-Corruption (CBA) Bureau tapped Sobiesiak’s phone and last week released transcripts to the PiS-friendly newspaper Rzeczpospolita in which Chlebowski was heard bragging that he had successfully blocked the taxation provision of the bill for a year but that it was hard work and it would be great if “Miro” and “Gześ” would help out. As I mentioned before, “Miro” and “Gześ” are thought to be references to the minister for sport and the deputy prime minister but Chlebowski knows many people of those names and cannot now remember which he meant – an excuse surely even a nine-year old would be ashamed to advance. So a businessman wanted a tax lifted from his business and the pro-business ruling party agrees to it. The sheep bleated for a low-tax party and a low-tax party is what they bah-bah bloody well got.

The scandal is really in the CBA’s actions. They leaked “operational materials” in an ongoing investigation to a newspaper. Why? Had they decided that Sobiesiak and Chlebowski were not under suspicion and that no crime had been committed? Tusk comes into the picture in August, which is when CBA chief Mariusz Kamiński (appointed by current opposition party PiS some years ago) told him what was going on. Some time later Sobiesiak stopped using phones and now people are speculating that Tusk warned him off or that maybe the CBA warned him off in order to make it look as if Tusk had warned him off. Such are the people Poles choose to have run their country for them. Look at the timing: this bombshell is dropped, scuttling, one presumes, any chance of bringing criminal charges against Chlebowski, which after all is the CBA’s job, just as Kamiński goes on trial for, among other things, faking documents in an investigation designed to entrap politicians. Also, presidential elections are just over a year away and it looks like Tusk (PO) will compete with Kaczyński (PiS).

Opinion polls indicate that people want the heads of Chlebowski (head of the PO “klub”*), Drzewiecki (minister for sport), Schetyna (deputy PM), Szejnfeld (a deputy minister in finances) and Czuma (minister for justice), but in all fairness I think that people, quite sensibly, support the resignation of any and all politicians as a matter of principle. If the pollsters had asked them should Barack Obama resign many would have said yes.

* No Pole I have ever encountered has been able to tell me what is meant by “klub” in this context.

The hawky eye of Your Man in Gdansk restlessly probes the murky undergrowth of Polish Politics to bring you the latest in scandals:

A juror in some dancing show, is up on charges of bribe taking in connection with the upcoming privatisation of a publishing house.

The Central Anti-Corruption Bureau tried unsuccessfully to entrap former president Kwaśniewski and his wife.

The head of the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau, Mariusz Kamiński, is in trouble over allegations of politically motivated entrapment (see above - although this has been known for years).

PO (the ruling party) politician Zbigniew Chlebowski is in trouble over his efforts to remove from a bill a paragraph that would damage the interests of the gambling industry. He was recorded saying words to the effect that “Miro” and “Grześ” were on-side. Sadly, memory has failed the sweating Chlebowski and he does not know who he could have meant by “Miro” and “Grześ,” though there are some suspicious souls who think “Miro” might be Mirosław Drzewiecki, minister for sport, who came on-side around June this year, and “Grześ” might be Grzegorz Schetyna, deputy minister for internal affairs and administration. Some even think the minister for sport should resign!

Oops! The last “scandal” slipped in there by accident. The wheeling and dealing between the gambling industry and the politicians was business as usual. There is no hint of corruption. PO, an openly - indeed proudly - pro-business political party, was simply persuaded by a branch of business to adopt a certain policy. That that policy will/would deprive the exchequer of something like 400 million zloties a year is irrelevant. Until a personal payment to one the three politicians is traced, there’s nothing to shout about. (The gambling industry companies in question already, of course, made perfectly legal donations to PO as a whole.)

The Lisbon Treaty vote is coming soon to Ireland, again. To re-cap: France and Holland rejected a planned European constitution so it was repackaged as a more innoccuous sounding treaty, which the Irish then rejected. Three strikes and you’re not out at all at all: the Lisbon treaty is to be voted on again by the Irish in a few days. Back in 2006, after one of the defeats, I mentioned an article in Gazeta Wyborcza by a Judit Kiss in which she blamed – essentially – public relations for the outcome. This time around no chances are being taken: in the Irish debate public relations are already being blamed. Here is an excerpt from a letter by Donncha O’Connell to the Irish Times of September 29^th:

Madam, – The contrast between the punchy slogans of Gerry Adams and the compelling logic of Noel Dorr (both in Opinion, September 28th) speaks volumes. In rhetorical terms, it is simply easier to undermine the case for the Lisbon Treaty than to defend it beyond reasonable doubt.

Isn’t it just so unfair! Mr O’Connell is only one of many, many commentators bemoaning how easy it is to agitate for a no vote and how awful it is that the yes campaigners have to spend so much time and effort refuting their opponents’ arguments. He is right, of course. The supporters of the constitution should not have to waste time persuading people to vote for it.

On this day, the anniversary of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Poland, Poles awoke to learn that the USA has decided not to go ahead with the missile shield. The country is in a state of chassis, as Russian rockets start to rain down on the larger cities. I shudder to think what would happen to leader-writers if Ireland were to vote No to the Lisbon treaty in two weeks’ time…

After the revelations about the government’s plans to privatise higher education there was a storm of debate on the pages of Gazeta Wyborcza – no, not about education, about something called the Hausner plan. Unless I miss my guess this is the second plan to be named after this Hausner person.  This one concerns public funding of the arts, or to be more precise, cutting public funding of the arts. Surprisingly enough, the government wants to hand over arts funding to the private sector. Corporations are to be allowed write off 1% of blah blah blah. GW has had articles on it every day and every day they printed a summary of the plan’s main points, as if you couldn’t guess to within 99.9% accuracy what a plan dreamed up under the auspices of a right wing neoliberal government consisted of.

Now I think puppet theatres and poetry and what-have-you are important but I am amazed at the complete lack of interest in Kazimierz Stępień’s expressed desire to remove the constitutional guarantee of free study. Propose getting rid of the requirement to do a post-doctoral degree and there is an uproar. Propose cutting poor people out of third level education and nothing.

The other thing that has been occupying the mainstream media of late is who gets to be called boss of the European Parliament – Jerzy Buzek or some Italian guy. We’re all supposed to be glued to our seats with our fingers crossed for Buzek even though we’re constantly told that the EU is about partnership and putting the interests of the community above the interests of individual nations. That’s all very well, it seems, but wouldn’t it be nice if Our Lads got some nice (”prestigious”) jobs out of it? At the risk of being drawn into the pointlessness of it all, here is some background information on Jerzy Buzek: he was not a very good prime minister of Poland for a few years, during which time one Marian Krzaklewski, trade union leader, was the power behind the throne. Krzaklewski also ran for the European Parliament but didn’t get in. Well it looks like he may soon get his old back seat back.

Underwear in Poland is knotted up to all hell in connection with the upcoming 20th anniversary celebrations of the defeat of communism. Prime minister Tusk invited some other East – sorry central – European leaders to a shindig in Gdańsk, where it all began but the trade union spoilsports decided to hold a protest there on the same day so Tusk did the statesmanlike thing and turned tail, bolting to Kraków for fear that other East – sorry central – European leaders might be exposed to the shocking sight of workers protesting, which was supposed to have ended – oh – twenty years ago, all of which is being exploited by the opposition (PiS, not KOR), with primesident Kaczyński promising a visit to Gdańsk and an awfully awfully important debate on the telly tonight between Tusk and somebody else what with European elections coming up and Palikot and Pitera and Ziobro and Róża Thun and it’s all very complicated so I’ll get straight to the point:

They’ve invited Kylie Minogue to celebrate the anniversary. Minogue has – like Madonna and Spinal Tap – reinvented herself so often that it might be worth reminding younger readers what she sounded like around the time the Polish working class was overthrowing communism:

She’s appearing with the Scorpions (“The Winner Change”). I hate to be a snob but the Polish for classical music is “muzyka poważna,” which means literally “serious music.” Could they not have got something a little more poważna?

A senator Misiak has been kicked out of Platforma Obywatelska for what I don’t quite know. He has blotted his copybook so often and so completely it’s hard to say. For instance, while in opposition he lobbied the government on work visas for Ukrainians. He was also involved in (if he did not simply own) a company called Work Service, which recruits workers from the Ukraine to Poland. Misiak is expendable, though. The coalition partner’s chief is not so expendable and so his various nepotistic misdemeanours are being indulged by prime minister Tusk.

Here’s how meaningless politics is nowadays: Danuta Hübner, a left-winger (she was European minister in Miller’s allegedly left-wing SLD government), is running for the European Parliament for Platforma Obywatelska, the neo-liberal, right wing, technocratic political party that rules Poland in coalition with the Peasants Party, described by Poles as “melons” because they’re green on the outside and red on the inside.

Andrzej Czuma, the new minister for justice here, did not just leave angry creditors behind him in the US. He also tangled with the courts in a number of car accidents. Not to be outdone, the chief of one of the opposition parties, the League of Polish Families – remember them? – has also had a run-in with the law. Mirosław O. (for that is how he must be known) was caught driving while under the influence last week. He has a blog but I won’t give the address for fear that readers might be able to figure out what the “O” stands for and that I might therefore be held liable for breaching his right to privacy. This was the man, by the way, who thought the theory of evolution was a lie.

This frivolity might draw objections – there’s a crisis on, not a circus. Okay, okay, read the papers and marvell over the joke European parliament elections to see who gets to wield the rubber stamp. Will it be Jacek Saryusz-Wolski or Danuta Hübner or Cimosiewicz? And will Radek Sikorski get to be the boss of NATO? I don’t know why we should be so interested in any of these turncoats’ new jobs.

When Platforma Obywatelska took over it looked like the end of a glorious two-year run of self-writing stories courtesy of the assorted gang of oddballs and weirdoes that had been in power before. With PO in the saddle it was just more dull neoliberalism – without even any need for the shock tactics Naomi Klein writes about.

Sure, there’s the crisis now, which makes newspapers worth buying again, but the entertainment value of world wide depression is short-lived. Already it’s settling into a depressing round of lay-offs, pay-cuts and dole queues. Madoff was good for a laugh but the high hopes everyone had entertained that another Madoff or two was in the woodwork waiting to be smoked out have faded.

But suddenly, PO perked up. Ćwiąkalski, minister for justice, resigned after a third convict in the Olewnik kidnapping case committed suicide in prison. Nie claimed that prime minister Tusk demanded Ćwiąkalski’s head not because of the suicide but because he (Ćwiąkalski) was seen at a party organized by a businessman awaiting trial on very serious charges of corrupting ministerial officials but the silence that greeted this revelation was deafening. But Ćwiąkalski’s replacement, Andrzej Czuma was another pair of galoshes. Firstly – look at him:

Secondly, he has espoused the American Way of gun ownership: a gun in every Polish household is what he wanted, though like those bishops he had to recant. Thirdly, it turns out that he left a string of angry creditors behind him in America. Fourthly – inevitably – he’s having a spot of nepotism bother over waving his son into his ministerial office. And so Tusk is left defending him and assuring all that Czuma is not for the boot – after less than a month in office.

And on top of all these goodies, Jan Rokita – a politician whose (admittedly limited) appeal I have never understood – goes and gets himself led off an aeroplane in handcuffs in Munich after getting shirty with an air hostess. Palikot (another crrrazy Polish politician) claims Rokita rang the highest leaders in the land to get the consular help all air ragers so richly deserve.