A silent coup in Poland?

[Syt]

http://www.dw.com/en/a-silent-coup-in-poland/a-18877537

A silent coup in Poland?

The days-old Polish government has wasted no time in making use of its new power. Critics are already worrying that their mandate has been stretched too far.

Beata Szydlo, prime minister of Poland since November 16, set the precedent for defied expectations with her choice of cabinet members.

As defense minister she appointed Antoni Macierewicz, who shares his hardline stance towards Moscow with the chief of the ruling Party for Law and Justice (PiS) Jaroslaw Kaczynski. Macierewicz eagerly spreads conspiracy theories about the plane crash in the Russian city of Smolensk five years ago that killed former President (and Jaroslaw's twin) Lech Kaczynski as well as a number of other high-ranking dignitaries. Worried he would scare away moderate conservative voters, Syzdlo promised in her campaign that Macierewicz would not take part in her government. And now he is in office.

Then there is the new secret service coordinator, Mariusz Kaminski. Former head of Poland's Central Anti-Corruption Bureau, Kaminski was convicted for abuse of office in March with a three-year prison sentence - barring him as well from public office. Kaminski has since appealed the ruling. In any case, the new prime minister was not bothered and has brought him into the government too. Immediately thereafter the president issued him a pardon.

The president versus the courts

Critics fear that the head of state's unprecedented move will prompt other officials to support the party so they too may secure legal impunity.

The move itself was illegal, believes Piotr Kladoczny of the Helsinki Foundation of Human Rights in Warsaw. "The president can pardon a conviction, but not the defendant himself," Kladoczny said.

In the meantime, judges from the court of appeals in Warsaw have spoken up. A council released a statement decrying the use of the justice system as a political instrument. Recalling the constitution's division of powers, it wrote: "The judiciary and the executive should not compete with each other and the president cannot release the courts of their constitutional duties."

Law's bulwark under siege

But the decision of what is just and what is unjust will rest in new hands.

Only a few days after the swearing-in of the new Sejm - the lower house of the Polish parliament - the ruling PiS party pushed through both houses of parliament an amendment that would vindicate the president's legal maneuvering.

Representatives and senators of the PiS voted in an nighttime session to appoint replacements for five recently nominated constitutional judges. With the help of the Kukiz'15 faction they gathered the necessary two-thirds majority to get their way. There was no hearing for constitutional judges. Amendment proposals were rejected. The opposition spoke of a shameful coup against the constitutional court and walked out before the vote in protest.

"It is very unnerving how the new leaders are moving forward, Kladoczny said. "It now looks like they want subordinate the constitutional court. That would be lethal," as the highest court is "the last reserve of jurisdiction."

The media's 'national duty'

Now the PiS has set its eyes on the media.

Shortly before a Breslau theater was set to premier its staging of Austrian playwright Elfriede Jelinek's "Der Tod und Das Mädchen," newly installed Culture Minister Piotr Glinski urged the performance to be called off amid talk that pornographic scenes would occur on stage. "Government money for culture will not be spent on pornography," he said.

When a television moderator from the channel TVP asked about the legal basis of his threat, Glinski dodged the question before offering threatening TVP in turn: "This program is propaganda, just like the propaganda and manipulation that your channel has been pushing for years," he said. "That will end soon. Public television is not allowed to function like that."

The journalist was pulled as the program's moderator and the culture minister soon announced that reform for rules governing the media were already in their "final phase." It is so far known that state television and radio channels, as well as the Polish press agency PAP, will be cast as "national cultural institutions." Their current boards will be swiftly replaced with people who in turn could be dismissed at any time.

Genuine threat or make believe?

Public outcry has been exaggerated, says Andrzej Grajewski, a journalist with the conservative weekly newspaper "Gosc Neidzielny." In fact, he says, public media in Poland has been strongly polarized for years, made evident by the election campaign. The question is only whether the boards will be politically varied in their representation or replaced only with functionaries close to the government. He also dismissed further governmental designs on the media, calling the plan of a PiS politician to eject foreign capital - mostly German - from the regional newspaper market "completely impossible."

Most of these measures are part of a long and elaborate scheme dubbed the "Program for the Renewal of the Republic," which bears the handwriting of the ideological head of the PiS, Jaroslaw Kaczynski. Only ten days in power, the government is only getting started.

I hear there's also attempts to bring Donald Tusk before a tribunal with regards to the Smolensk plane crash?

[Syt]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/poland/12019815/Poland-to-increase-the-size-of-army-by-50-per-cent-to-guarantee-the-integrity.html

Poland to increase the size of army by 50 per cent to 'guarantee the integrity'

The decision to increase the army was not just about soldiers but equipment and barracks, insists Michal Jach, head of the Polish parliament's defence committee

Poland plans to increase the size of its army by 50 per cent to help "guarantee the integrity" of the nation's borders.

Under the plan the Polish army would grow from its current strength of 100,000 to 150,000 as the country continues to expand the capabilities of its armed forces. Poland has pledged to hit the unofficial Nato defence spending target of two per cent of GDP and has launched an intensive modernisation programme.

Speaking about the army, Michal Jach, head of the Polish parliament's defence committee, said an increase in size was part of a "profound reform to achieve a level of operational capacity that would guarantee the integrity of the Polish borders".

The move reflects growing Polish security concerns. Poland has viewed with alarm the conflict in neighbouring Ukraine and the actions of what it considers as a revanchist Russia.

Beata Szydlo, Poland's new prime minister who took office this month following the victory of her Law and Justice party in October's general election, has called Russia Poland's "enemy", and many in her government view Moscow with the deepest suspicions.

Antoni Macierewicz, the country's new defence minister, has said he wants to rebuild the Polish armed forces "as fast as I can".

Mr Jach conceded that expanding the army by 50 per cent would be a complicated procedure, stressing that it "was not just about soldiers but also about equipment and barracks".

Along with increasing the size of the regular army, Poland also plans to create three territorial brigades to protect the country's eastern flank.

[Martinus]

We already have a Polish politics thread!

The business with the constitutional tribunal judges is a bit dodgy as PO, in the outgoing Parliament, has indeed bent the law to appoint 3 out of 5 judges that PiS is now trying to replace. As it is now, both pieces of legislation (the PO's and the PiS's) are now submitted to the constitutional tribunal and we will see how the tribunal rules.

This will be a cause to worry if the judgement of the tribunal is not complied with by the government. Until then, I am afraid this is business as usual and everything that could have been expected from PiS coming to power - but not yet a cause for concern for the Polish democracy.

[Martinus]

As for the "pornographic play" thingie, again, the minister sent a letter to the local authorities in Breslau (where the play was to be performed) demanding the play to be pulled and the authorities entirely rebuked the letter, saying they have neither will nor ability to intervene and the a priori censorship is illegal in Poland. The performance went ahead (despite rosary-wielding protesters outside - in fact one journalist was apparently "attacked with a rosary") and the minister has become a popular target of unflattering memes.

The journalist who asked tough questions was only pulled as a programme moderator for two days "pending ethical commission investigation", and the public tv's ethical commission has found her conduct to be faultless and in fact sent a strongly worded letter to the minister, and reinstated the journalist to her programme.

So again, this seems like the democracy and the system working as designed. The only surprise I have really is why PiS is doing it like this - they would have got much farther by attempting a "silent coup" in fact - instead they went for a blatant, televised, broadcasted and noisy power grab which is already galvanising against them the public lulled into apathy by 8 years of the boring PO government.

Poland is not Hungary or Russia, mind you - people here are very contrarian and freedom-loving to the point of anarchism and any attempts at authoritarianism need to be very clever to succeed.

[jimmy olsen]

The army increase is warranted.

[Syt]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35217586

EU ready to fight Polish media law amid row over values

A senior EU official has threatened legal action against Poland's new conservative government over its controversial media law.

The EU Commissioner for the Digital Economy, Guenther Oettinger, said: "There are solid grounds for us to activate the rule of law mechanism and put Warsaw under monitoring."

Polish MPs have approved a law giving the government direct control over top appointments in public broadcasting.

It undermines free speech, critics say.

In an interview with Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) newspaper, Mr Oettinger said he would raise the Polish media law issue at a meeting of the Commission on 13 January.

Under the EU's rule of law mechanism, adopted last year, the Commission can escalate pressure on a member state to amend any measure that is considered a "systemic threat" to fundamental EU values.

In the last resort, a state's voting rights in the EU Council - where government ministers shape EU policy - can be suspended. The Commission is the EU's top regulator, enforcing EU treaties.

On Saturday the directors of four channels of TVP - Poland's public service television - resigned in protest at the new law.

The Polish news website Dziennik named them as: Piotr Radziszewski (TVP1), Jerzy Kapuscinski (TVP2), Katarzyna Janowska (TVP Kultura) and Tomasz Sygut (Television Information Agency).

The media law has not yet taken effect - but President Andrzej Duda, an ally of the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS), is expected to approve it this week.

New managers

Media watchdogs in Europe have voiced alarm about the media shake-up. It will put TVP and Polish Radio - which have a huge audience - under the control of a new national media council close to the ruling PiS.

Current media regulators will be replaced, and the treasury minister will exert direct control over the public channels' managers.

The public broadcasters will be re-designated as "national cultural institutes".

The PiS says new managers are needed at the top of state institutions because the previous centre-right Civic Platform party allowed corruption to flourish.

The PiS is also Eurosceptic, firm on traditional Catholic values and committed to increasing social welfare spending.

Comparisons have been made with Hungary, whose conservative Fidesz government also clashed with the EU Commission over human rights.

TVP has two main national channels, and operates regional services and the satellite network TV Polonia.

Public Polish Radio reaches just over half of the population, with more than 200 radio stations.

Last week Poland also introduced controversial changes to its constitutional court.

A new law requires the 15-strong court to reach a two-thirds majority with at least 13 members present, in order to pass most of its rulings. The PiS also appointed five judges to the court.

Critics say the changes will undermine democratic checks and balances.

I hear that they also introduced a law that will terminate all high level bureaucrat's contracts, unless they're specifically extended, and that the rules of entry will be relaxed to allow PiS to fill the positions with their loyalists?

[Martinus]

Yes.

[Solmyr]

Poland is the new Hungary?

[Martinus]

Poland is the new Hungary?

Yes, at least that's what PiS is hoping for. There are several factors which make me hopeful they will not succeed, though.

[Zanza]

I never really got the reason why PiS is so anti-German. Is it because of current political issues or just age-old resentments?

[Martinus]

I never really got the reason why PiS is so anti-German. Is it because of current political issues or just age-old resentments?

I think it's a bit of both. Germany is a convenient bogeyman for the "threat" of the "EU kulturkampf" - as some satirist once expressed via a cartoon, PiS is protecting traditional Polish Catholic families from hordes of vegetarian bicycle-riding German gay couples buying Polish land and forcibly adopting Polish children.

[Syt]

Sheesh, one genocidal occupation, and suddenly we're the bad guys.

[Syt]

"Put Poland under supervision? That will all just rest with us again!"
"Maybe the Russians can take care of half of it again."

[Martinus]

Sheesh, one genocidal occupation, and suddenly we're the bad guys.

Oh, this is much older than that. The Bismarck's kultur-kampf, not the nazi occupation, is a direct template for that fear. Incidentally, that's one example of foreign occupation (another being the Swedish invasion) where I wish the invaders were more succesful. 

By the way - the German question was consistently a big part of the Polish public debate during the pre-independence and independence movements of the 19th and early 20th century - the question being whether we should play the role of Germany's junior partner (the so-called "Piast" strategy) or try to strike on our own by forming a "Mitteleuropa" coalition that tries to remain independent of both Germany and Russia (the so-called "Jagellon" strategy). This division is quite clear in PO/PiS politics.

[Norgy]

Who'd be natural allies? The Czechs and Slovaks? Ukraine?