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It is difficult to find a more hard hitting title than the one bestowed by Prof. Wojciech Roszkowski upon his new work: "Heading towards Targowica. Poland 2005 - 2015". It deals with such a seemingly recent period, when under the governance of the Civic Platform (PO) supported by the Polish People's Party (PSL) we were on course for national, economic and moral disintegration. Did some evil powers conspire against us? Well, probably. But evil people did for sure. The start of that calamitous decade was quite promising. The post-communists got a thrashing in the 2005 elections, Law and Justice (PiS) and the Civic Platform were both ready to assume power. Rather unexpectedly Law and Justice won the elections with a slight, 22 seat majority over PO. A majority, nonetheless. Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz – only God knows why – was designated by PiS to be the prime minister and he actually stood at the helm after talks amongst potential coalition members ended in a fiasco with Jan Rokita – a fact not overlooked by Prof. Roszkowski – having to leave empty handed. He remained the "prime minister from Kraków", naturally enclosed in inverted commas. It was a time when Aleksander Kwaśniewski made such a mess of things that one election followed in the wake of another, as exactly two weeks later, the presidential elections took place. Lo and behold Lech Kaczyński beat Donald Tusk in the second round. According to the text, that result sparked "shock and aggression" within the ranks of the Civic Platform, which it seems, prevail to this day. On the other hand, the Self-Defence party and the League of Polish Families, coalition partners by necessity of PiS, were becoming ever more irksome. Sex scandals were hot on the heels of excesses by the All-Polish Youth, the Church was split over the lustration, shocking the faithful with scenes which played out before ingress of bishop Wielgus to the post of Metropolitan of Warsaw, which incidentally never came to pass. As a result, in mid-December 2006, prime minister Jarosław Kaczyński, who in the meantime replaced the unfortunate Marcinkiewicz, said with a fair dose of self-criticism: "Cleaning skeletons from the national closet is proving to be difficult". At the same time pursuing the Fourth Polish Republic project with the help of the Self-Defence party and the League of Polish Families became a reckless if not – as it now seems –unfeasible task. The Civic Platform was accusing the government, and in particular the prime minister of practically everything, Kwaśniewski, the former president was soliciting the Germans with suggestions that if PiS were to stay in power "Berlin would have to reconsider whether to maintain their restraint towards Poland". According to the text, that statement "annoyed most politicians and as a result Left and Democrats (LiD) lost popularity, similar to the drunk shenanigans of the former president at the University of Kiev. Václav Havel, the former president of the Czech Republic, during a bizarre interview spoke about the endangered Polish democracy and suggested for European Union and OSCE observers to become involved. And a new election date, after the dissolution of the Sejm on 7 September 2007, was set for 21 October of that same year. Following that election campaign which brought Tusk and his people to power, resulting in a disastrous cohabitation with the president and a whole series of scandals after the tragic events in Smoleńsk, Władysław Bartoszewski referred to PiS politicians as "diplo-nitwits" and "deviants" and Tusk himself said that seeing Jarosław Kaczyński then was like seeing Jerzy Urban in 1981. After the death of President Lech Kaczyński, the bashing of the deceased's brother did not end. Janusz Palikot – luckily absent from today's politics, yet only God knows for how long – was a prominent figure in that witch-hunt. It was him who, after the events in Łodź where a Civic Platform fanatic killed Marek Rosiak, an assistant of MEP Janusz Wojciechowski, currently running for the European Commissioner for Agriculture post, said: "One madman who killed, and another madman using this death for political leverage" whist reprimanding Jarosław Kaczyński: "Hold your horses, do not incite hatred". The Polish President Bronisław Komorowski openly supported Palikot and in 2009 was to have said about the deceased president that he "will be flying somewhere and everything will change" – which Jarosław Kaczyński rebuked him for. In 2016 further depravation and plunder of Poland was halted. "A state in theory", at least in its old format, ceased to exist. However, evil never sleeps as the author does not fail to warn us. There is no shortage of those eager to build a state powerful towards the weak and weak towards the powerful, rampart with corruption and inept on the international arena. And to think that until recently that is the kind of Poland we lived in.

Krzysztof Masłoń

Tekst ukazał się w DoRzeczy 40/2019