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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?

What’s fun about the crisis is watching the experts scramble to explain things they obviously don’t understand. The same experts who didn’t see this coming are now spouting off about how long it will last. It’s funny also to see blind faith in the voodoo power of magic words make a comeback. Tusk announced yesterday that if the zloty sinks in value to 20 euro cents Poland will defend it. But it’s not “intervention” and please don’t use that word, he says. After all, the government is not about intervention. Another funny one, which unfortunately I can’t find on the internet editions of Gazeta Wyborcza, was the opinion expressed by some experts that actually intervening in the currency markets would be a bad idea but talking about intervening – that would be fine, just what the zloty needs.

The government is interv– errr, defending the zloty by cashing in all the euros it has from the EU on the money markets rather than in the central bank (if this sounds like gibberish to you perhaps you should consider a career in economics). A good idea, surely? Those euros are worth a lot of zloties these days. But basically this is currency speculation and speculation, we are being told, is the problem causing the zloty’s weakness. It’s good when we do it but bad when others do it.

More entertainment: a mini-Madoff has been found.

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.

Jacek Żakowski is what passes for a left winger here in Poland. In fact he’s regarded as practically a Bolshevik, while the organ he writes for, Polityka, despite abundant evidence to the contrary, is considered almost socialist. Despite his undeniably communistic credentials the final few sentences of a recent article about the politics of doing nothing in the aforementioned pinko rag are worth quoting in full:

But somehow it has come about that in a country which – it is ever clearer – is involved in a civilisational leap, everything public has for years been consistently pushed into deeper chaos. The point of this is obvious. When TVP [public television] broadcasts only dancing on ice and the speeches of chairman Kaczyński, when the quality of public education has fallen well below private education, and when a visit to a specialist in a public health clinic means a three year wait everyone will finally agree with the ideological thesis that all public services should be privatized

In yesterday’s entry I forgot to mention the huff that president Kaczyński disappeared into after Tusk’s victory. Apparently, before the wheels of government could be set again in motion, Tusk – like it or not, the people’s choice – had to apologise to the president for all the nasty things he said. Like for instance, referring to “the Kaczyński brothers.” But they are brothers… Yesterday was the first day of the new parliament and it too was marked by PiS’s petty spitefulness. Ziobro suggested that the proposed marshal of the Sejm had “questions to answer.” What those questions were, alas, we do not know, since no one in his party had the guts to ask them. The important thing was to smear the new guy and get a whispering campaign going good and early against him.

But all of that is behind us now as golden age of PO-PSL politics, flawless and incorrupt, with the interests only of the nation at heart, opens up before us. Since the subject of politics is therefore closed for the next four years or so I turn to Nabokov, a worthy adversary, but in this case an ally. He believes that before generalisation must come attention to detail.

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?”

I mentioned before how the names change but the faces remain in Polish politics. Here is the concrete example of Jacek Kurski, sometimes known as the “Bull Terrier” though “Liar” would be both less complimentary and more truthful. Mr. Kurski, deeply principled politican that he is, in his infinite care for the people of Poland, was in the early 90s associated with Porozumienie Centrum, the Kaczyńskis’ old party. Then he got in with something called the Ruch Odrodzenie Polski (Movement to Rebuild — oh what difference does it make?). Then he joined the Christian Union (former PM Marcinkiewicz’s old party, unless I miss my guess) before joining the now defunct AWS, Akcja Wyborcza Solidarności, which once ruled this country! They lost so he joined PiS but left for LPR (Giertych’s bunch of nutcases) before going back to the winners: PiS again. (Details courtesy of the current Nie but you can also check out this website Znani Polacy.) Neither Nie nor Znani Polacy has any information on what the people he pretends to represent make of all this.

Characteristic of the political brutality here is the headline in the latest Newsweek over a picture of PO leader Donald Tusk: “Porażka w wyborach oznacza koniec platformy”
“Losing these elections means the end of PO”
Note: not the end of ineffectual leader and perennial loser, Donald Tusk, but the end of an entire political party, and I suspect Newsweek is right.

Another party that requires neutralising is the Partia Kobiet, the Women’s Party. Primesident Kaczyński is seeing to that: he has poached the wife of former PO politician Jan Rokita to act as his adviser in women’s affairs - an area in which he has shown little interest up until now - except when the woman in question was Barbara Blida.

“It’s War,” says today’s Dziennik, referring to further political revelations, machinations and deteriorations of relations in parliamentary politics which I won’t go into here. But there is one intriguing item in the article: once, many years ago, Donald Tusk made fun of Jaros?aw Kaczy?ski’s voice. Kaczy?ski repsonded by pulling a (legally held) gun on Tusk! I don’t use exclamation marks lightly and I had to re-read the sentence several times but yes, Kaczy?ski actually aimed a real gun at Tusk! Could I have misunderstood? It seems not: later on the journalist (Piotr Zaremba) speculates if today Kaczy?ski might have pulled the trigger.

W odpowiedzi Kaczy?ski wyci?ga spod marynarki pistolet… i mierzy w Tuska.

In reply, Kaczy?ski took out a gun from under his jacket… and aimed it at Tusk.

At least Kazimiera Szczuka was only censured and her TV network fined for mocking someone’s voice.