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… for the failure to post any of the deluge of comments over the last few months. This was due to a combination of spam and technical incompetence: in blocking spam to one post I somehow disabled all commenting. Your comments are now up on the relevant pages but I’ll post a few replies of sorts here. Most of it will mean little or nothing to you, I’m afraid, but it’s the internet and paper is cheap.

It’s true: a PESEL is not a social security number except in the sense that in many countries your social security number is the only numerical identifier you have. A PESEL is only that: a numerical identifier. In general it’s always a mistake to volunteer more information than you are asked for by bureaucrats.

I’m afraid I’m going to cop out of the post on the abolition of MA theses: it turned out that the proposals reported in the Dziennik were “only” proposals and ministry officials hastened to say so when the whole establishment kicked up stink about the changes. They were just leaking/floating another scheme.

Something similar happened when Giertych announced the changes to the reading list for school children. Poland laughed and they wheeled out some ministry flunky to say they were only “proposals.” In this case, though, I understand a lot of the proposals were enacted. To speak of “MAs by research” was a bit sloppy on my part. The hitherto primary academic degree in Poland is called a “magister” and includes a thesis but there is of course a very large taught component.

It’s good to hear from you Damo. Who knows the primesidents’ precise motives for introducing the vetting procedure? I’m tempted to say that it’s less about eliminating the left than personal spitefulness and score-settling. I admit it’s a bit pop-psychological to lay the blame for government policy in a 35 million strong, functioning democracy at the feet of the personalities of its primesident but it’s just a feeling I have. There is no left left in Poland.

I write Health Care Bingo drunk. It’s a provocation and I don’t really think Poles are too mean to pay for a proper public health care service but– wait a minute. I do think they’re too mean to pay for it out of central taxation. Why else are there only varying shades of right wing parties in the country? And I’m sober now.

I don’t have the heart to explain all the “lustration” shenanigans in Poland so I will just throw out a few comments for those who have been following it, but perhaps not that closely, and perhaps relying on English language sources. Unsurprisingly, the lustration law was found to be largely unconstitutional on Friday by the Constitutional Tribunal. Before it deliberated, Lechosław Kaczyński claimed that its members should themselves undergo lustration because they might be biased. Its members have undergone lustration, as Kaczyński well knows. In a last minute attempt to pervert the course of justice a PiS deputy, Mularczyk, dug up two files from the IPN archives which purported to show that two of the Tribunal’s judges had worked with the secret services. One of the judges was in the secret police files precisely because he had flatly refused to co-operate. The other’s entry dated from shortly after Poland overthrew communism. Mularczyk (who was acting on the orders of Ludwik Dorn) may face criminal charges. This single action is possibly the strongest argument against the lustration law: it is wide open to political manipulation and abuse. The two judges had to be removed from the proceedings.

Unusually, this attack on the judiciary was described by both Gazeta Wyborcza and Dziennik as an attack – normally one paper can be relied on to say the opposite of the other. Luckily for the government, the tabloids were more obedient. Fakt asked rhetorically: How can we trust the judges? GW responded with a survey showing the vast majority of Poles trust the Tribunal. Flunky government intellectuals have taken the opportunity to ask the question: what do we need a Constitutional Tribunal for anyway? failing to follow it through to its logical extent with: “what do we need a constitution for?”

Worryingly, the judges in the tribunal urged that there be no delay in publishing their decision. (It only becomes law when published in the “Dziennik Ustaw” or daybook of law.) Surely they did not think that the government would be so underhand as to delay publication? But that would be openly flouting the principle of separation of powers: an attack not just on individual, named judges, but upon democracy itself. They did think so and they were right to be worried. The government is delaying publication. It’s all a question of timing.

Dziennik and TVN (a television station) are saying that by May 15th you must state whether you worked with the secret services or not. This is untrue. The law requires that you comply within 30 days of being informed by your employer of your duty to do so. For some this period has already elapsed. Others used delaying tactics: you have to be informed by registered post and if you refuse to accept any registered post from the postman (instead collecting it within two weeks from the local post office after receiving a second notice of delivery) this can buy you quite a lot of extra time. So a friend of mine, for instance, has until May 23rd to comply but there is a good chance that despite the government’s abuse of democratic procedures the law will be definitively struck down before then. To such pathetic levels of civil disobedience has Poland been reduced by the Kaczyńskis’ spiteful paranoia.

No winged missive has issued from the nine mighty citadels of the Three Monkeys Empire HQ in the hills around Bologna yet so my thirty day clock has not even started ticking yet. Perhaps my editor, like the IPN, is biding his time…

This just in:
In the end they did publish the court’s decision on May 15th. They needed reminding that such decisions take precedence over any other legislation in the queue for official publication. But it is to be expected that the Kaczyńskis would be somewhat ignorant of the law. (That’s supposed to be ironic: one or both of them has a PhD in the subject.)

Andrzej Zybertowicz puts up a strong, if entirely illogical, defence of the law requiring journalists to swear to whether they did or did not cooperate with the secret services of communist Poland in Wednesday’s Rzeczpospolita. Journalists should sign the loyalty declarations beacuse they are “the fourth estate.” It’s that simple. I have scoured the constitution of Poland and I have not found any reference to the “estates.” In fact, I had always thought the division of society into the estates of king, clergy, nobility and scum was rather a medieval way of looking at things. And I’d love to see some of the privileges he claims journalists (remember that includes you if you hit the comments button) in Poland have. Nothing much - perhaps the occasional invite to an opening night or awards ceremony, free travel, access to politicians…

Zybertowicz also has recourse to principles. Refusal to declare whether or not you cooperated is not civil disobedience, which requires that at least two conditions be met: number the first — but wait a minute, Zybertowicz is making these principles up off the top of his head. No one is obliged to recognise his “conditions.”

As of today, the — at least nominally — independent courts no longer deal with the “lustracja” question. IPN, a government agency, does. Zybertowicz is a member of the IPN’s investigative team.

Not all journos here are finding the legal requirement to pledge that you never informed under communism so irksome as those prima donnas who claim that this is mere humiliation, since in any case the archives are about to be thrown open to journalists (and that, as mentioned before, means nearly everyone — including you, Mr. Marcin Klecel, writer of a letter to today’s Dziennik excoriating those journalists who are calling for a boycott, so get your humble-pencil out and sign your declaration of loyalty before you are forbidden from writing to the papers for ten years for failure to comply).

With Ewa Milewicz (whose opposition credentials are impeccable) taking the lead, a number of prominent journalists are calling for a boycott of the new loyalty law.

The loyal opposition (mainly Fakt, Dziennik and Rzeczpospolita hacks), however, are finding the presidential winds bracing. They have responded with an open letter of support for the poorly framed and spiteful law (why make people sign declarations when in any case the names of informers and suspected informers are soon to be published on the internet by the IPN?) The fearless fourth estate agents write: “It is with surprise that we learn of the announcement of journalists who refuse to submit a lustracja [verification] declaration. Unfortunately, this raises many dramatic questions about their past.” So no sleazy innuendo, professional back-biting or opportunism there, then…

My favourite argument for signing up is that the law is the law. I look forward to outraged condemnations of the Augustow blockade (held in protest against delays in building an — illegal under EU, i.e. Polish, law — ring road throught the Rospuda valley) on the pages of Fakt and Dziennik in the very near future. Fakt called the assorted Greens opposed to the road “terrorists” on their front page a few weeks ago.

From March 15th all journalists born before 1972 working in Poland will have to sign a declaration that they did not spy for the Polish People’s Republic. That includes me: Polish law has a very wide definition of journalism and the bill makes no distinction between Poles and foreigners. Nor does it make any attempt to account for the dispersed nature of the internet: Shane Barry is also supposed to state that he was not nor never was a member of the co– wooops, got a bit carried away there — to state that he never spied for the communists. (I’m relying on Kontrateksty for this information.) If you send in a comment to me you will have to sign the declaration too.

Taking a leaf from the Irish anti-smoking ban, the Polish government is getting people’s employers to do its dirty work. It is the responsibility of your employer to make sure you own up to not having been a spy. The courts will have the power to impose sanctions on publishers - including striking the publication of the national register (whatever and wherever that is) - if its writers don’t sign up. The mighty legal department of Three Monkeys Online is - like the Polish government - on red alert.