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…
No, not really. He is bitter to the end. He is claiming that a judge’s decision to force a couple of PiS-sympathetic journalists to appear in court in a libel case is evidence that the new rulers of Poland are in cahoots with the judiciary to do down PiS. I know, I know it doesn’t make sense. Meanwhile the soon-to-be-ex-minister for defence appears to believe that bad news from Iraq should be censored: he took Gazeta Wyborcza to task for reporting the death of a Polish soldier there before the man’s family had been informed. The newspaper did not release the man’s name, in case you were wondering. They merely reported what had happened. The same soon-to-be-ex-minister for defence is putting it about that the soon-to-be-future-minister for defence, Radosław Sikorski, is a traitor. Kaczyński claims Sikorski is anti-American - apparently because he had the cheek to actually try to negotiate favourable terms about the missile defence system that America - sorry, Poland, wants to build here. Remember: it was Kaczyński that made Sikorski minister for defence in the not too distant past.
And among Ziobro’s last acts was the appointment of his secret police henchman to a nice feathered nest in the state prosecution service.
Marcin Wojciechowski of Gazeta Wyborcza (Feb 13th) takes the unfortunate minister for agriculture, Andrzej Lepper, to task for questioning the wisdom of locating an anti-missile shield in Poland. “In matters of state as important as the missile shield only the competent members of government should speak out, not the minister for agriculture, and never outside of the country,” he writes, continuing “Lepper has broken both these principles” — principles which Wojciechowski made up on the spot. The idea of collective cabinet responsibility appears to be alien to both politicians and journalists in Poland. It’s perfectly okay here to blame Lepper for – e.g.– the pork mountain, even if you are in a coalition with him. And how dare a (democratically elected) farmer speak out about national defence, eh?
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