COUNTRY LIKE A PILE OF STONES
CZESLAW RYSZKA
The weekly ‘Wprost’ made the eavesdropped talks public, made, among the others, by the chief of the Interior Ministrer Bartlomiejn Sienkiewicz with the president of the Polish National Bank Marek Belka about a possibility of supporting the state budget by the National Bank of Poland a few months before the elections, so that the Law and Justice party would not win. Marek Belka set a requirement of the dismissal of the Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski, in return for ‘printing extra money’, and a novelization of the act about the central bank, beneficial for him. The weekly states that the talk took place in July 2013. In November Jacek Rostowski was dismissed and in the end of May 2014 the Council of Ministers received a project of the act novelization of the Act about the National Bank of Poland.
In the revealed recordings there is also a thread concerning the prime minister Donald Tusk, referring to the matter of Amber Gold, a company which had employed his son. The talk suggests that the prime minister knew earlier that Amber Gold was a financial pyramid. Unfortunately, he was doing nothing so that procurators would deal with the matter.
Such words were said by the chief of the Civic Platform party Donald Tusk in 2006 when the tapes with the talk with the parliamentarian of the Law and Justice party were revealed, who was trying to persuade the parliamentarian of the Self-Defence party Renata Beger to cooperate with his party: ‘I am moved by the content of these tapes. I thank journalists for supporting democracy through revealing the compromising scandal of political corruption. , (…) Millions of Poles could see the background of the politics thanks to these recordings, discrediting the current government. Today all decent people must demand immediate shortening of the term of office of the Seym and dismissal of the government (…)’.
And what did the prime minister Tusk say about the scandal in his government, the scandal much more serious than the one in 2006 in the Law and Justice party? Well, not only did not he notice the breach of law in it, but he even decided that Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz would talk with Marek Belka about ‘how to help the Polish country, not bring harm to it’. They were behaving like ‘pro-state men’. Therefore- Donald Tusk said – there were no reasons to dismiss the current chief of the Interior Ministry. He concluded: ‘We are dealing with destabilization of the Polish country through the dealings of illegal setting up wiretapping and in a probably well-organized way’.
Also the president of the National Bank of Poland Marek Belka decided that he would not demit because in no way did the credibility of the institution represented by him suffer. There was not any political dispute in the talk, but – as he said – ‘care about the country’ was expressed.
Why didn’t Donald Tusk thank journalists this time for supporting democracy, but he decided that they were dealing with criminal activity and participated in the creeping coup? Wasn’t it from his order that functionaries of the Inner Safety Agency, procurators and policemen entered into the editorial office of the weekly ‘Wprost’ by force, demanding to give laptops and recordings as ‘an evidence of a crime’ in the eavesdropping scandal? We know that in the editorial office there were many scuffles and attempts of inertia of Sylwester Latkowski, the editor-in-chief of ‘Wprost’ who thought the actions of the Internal Security Agency as illegal and refused to give materials. He stated that in Poland journalists are obliged to protect their sources if they reserved their anonymity and only the court can revoke it.
I am not fond of the weekly ‘Wprost’ because it is not the first time it has possessed the eavesdropped materials, but is in solidarity with journalists of nearly most mass media, who wrote in a special statement that ‘it has been the first case since the year 1989 when the secret services are interfering into the sphere of the freedom of speech in its most sensitive aspect which is the protection of sources which have reserved their anonymity’.
Similarly the Congress of Independent Media issued a statement that ‘the current authorities of the Third Polish Republic have been a threat to the freedom of speech and media for a long time. There have been many drastic examples for it in the recent years. (…) Arrogance of the current authorities towards media and citizens took on sizes dangerous for democracy. It is a threat to the legal order of Poland and its Constitution’. The Congress of Independent Media called all citizens and media to counteract these scandalous practices.
The raid of special services onto the editorial office of the weekly ‘Wprost’ is an example of illegal and politically-featured using the apparatus of the authority by the team of the prime minister Tusk, in order to inhibit any actions which would threaten the stability of his government. Therefore, making these talks public, despite the fact that they came from eavesdropping, is not a coup at all, but revealing corruption and negligence of law, using public offices to settle private and a political party’s interests. If the revealed recordings are the peak of an icy mountain of similar, out-of-constitutional actions of the people in the supreme posts in the country, what is the editorial team of ‘Wprost’ supposed to describe in other editions – it is true what the minister Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz said that ‘the Polish country does not exist’ – it is only a ‘pile of stones’.
(AA)
"Niedziela" 26/2014