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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.

Perhaps I should make this a regular feature - if I could be bothered buying Rzeczpospolita regularly. Today’s paper, as usual, contains translations of editorials from foreign papers on page two. One is from the Daily Telegraph. The Rz writes:
“Tymczasem teoria, ?e za kryminalne zachowania obywateli odpowiedzialne jest spo?ecze?stwo, jest nieprawdziwa.”
This means:
“The theory that society is responsible for the criminal behaviour of citizens is false.”
The original reads:
“The idea that society is to blame for criminal behaviour is passe”

Todays’s Rzeczpospolita has a translation of part of yesterday’s Guardian editorial. Interestingly, Rzeczpospolita leaves out a few sentences from the Guardian piece without following the convention of putting in ellipsis to mark the ommission. Also, the Polish newspaper translates the original “the old left” with the words “extreme left-wingers.”

The Guardian suggests that Chavez is popular in Europe mainly because he is anti-Bush (perish the thought that it is because of any positive contibution Chavez has made to Venezuela) but that’s not enough for Rzeczpospolita. The original reads:

To some extent, Mr Chavez is a beneficiary of the crude logic of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” [my italics].

The Rzeczpospolita translation reads:

Mr Chavez’s popularity in Europe stems from the principle “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”

This is the kind of distortion that used to take place under the communists in Poland. For instance, in a translation of Langston Hughes’s poem “Brass Spittoons,” which apeared in the Polish press in 1948, the line

“And the slime in hotel spittoons:
Part of my life”

was changed to

“The slime in hotel spittoons
That’s my life.”

The original, though harshly crtitical of America’s treatment of its underclass, was just not critical enough so the translator intervened to change this vision of misery from a “part of my life” to “my life.” It’s good to see that Poland has not blindly abandoned everything associated with communism.

This weekend’s Rzeczpospolita carries an interview with Leszek Balcerowicz, the man who administered economic “shock therapy” to Poland, freeing the market almost overnight in 1990. To some he is a bete noire; for others an economic genius. The interrogation was carried out by Slawomir Popowski and Dariusz Rosiak.

Balcerowicz invited the reader to look at developed countries with particularly high structural unemployment, a problem which mainly concerns, he says, three countries: Italy, France and Germany. Social interventionism by the state is the cause of the great social problem there that is unemployment. Quick as a flash Popowski gave the counter example of Sweden, while Rosiak pointed out that Germany absorbed communist East Germany and that unemployment is still concentrated in post-communist Germany (as it is in post-communist Poland).

Balcerowicz also blamed high unemployment in Poland on (among other things) failure to liberalise employment law. Once again Popowski supplied a counter example: Ireland, where workers’ rights are far better protected than in Poland and unemployment far lower. Displaying the mastery of detail and ability to marshal the relevant facts that places him in the forefront of Polish journalism, he pointed out that a Polish labour inspector has the power to fine a company found exploiting workers only about 250 euros. In Latvia a rank and file inspector can levy a fine of up to 1,500 euros and his superior can hit the employer for 7,500. “Surely, Professor Balcerowicz,” he asked, “in such conditions there is really no need to make labour law any more ‘liberal’. Why demand any more ‘flexibility’ from workers when they can clearly be fired virtually without sanction?”

Actually, not all of the above is true. The interruptions by the intrepid journalists I made up. In fact Balcerowicz was permitted to trot out the usual banalities about the free market and liberalisation with no hindrance. This kind of reporting does no favours to anyone. Balcerowicz has a head on his shoulders and it’s more than likely he could dispose of the objections I made above (that stuff about the labour inspectors is just something I picked up in the latest number of Polityka) but he comes out of the interview (chat?) looking like just another platitude-mouthing time-server.

From Friday’s Rzeczpospolita, a national daily paper in Poland: A front page article by Marcin Czeka?ski about the detrimental effects of the government’s disarray. It seems that many key posts have not been filled yet. There is no treasury minister, for example. And then this gem:

“Privatisation is limping. PiS [the near-winners of the elections] has not sold a single firm of any size. Even though the privatisation plans of the previous government are still binding, they [the current government] are not carrying them out.”

It would appear to go without saying - literally without saying - that privatisation is a good thing (the article is clearly about the bad effects of the current situation). Privatisation is not presented here (a long way from the opinion section) as an economic policy with merits and demerits. It may indeed be a wise policy for Poland to follow but is that not a judgement one must make and defend with - oh, I don’t know - “facts”, “evidence”? You could argue that the absence of a treasury minister should also be presented more neutrally, not as an unquestionably bad thing. You would be right. A rudderless Poland is not necessarily a bad thing when people like Giertych and Lepper are itching to take control.

And since when were governments bound by the decisions of previous governments? If that is the case why have elections to change governments?

Rzeczpospolita, however, is only trotting after Gazeta wyborcza, whose pompousness seems inversely proportional to its decline in intellectual standards. Here’s a typically arrogant headline from Monday the 23rd. The story concerns modern architecture:

Poles still fear contrast. In Poland there is still little modern architecture built into the historic fabric. Even moderately extravagant projects can cause a good deal of confusion - is it fear of the new or a dictatorship of conservationists?

The poor benighted people are “confused” by extravagant intrusions of concrete and glass into medieval streets. And what causes this? Well, the sub editor allows only two possibilities - fear and dictatorship.