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The not-so-silly season: a summer update

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As successive TNS Polska polls illustrate, there is little indication that two significant scandals that hit the coalition parties over the summer months have had any discernible effect on their standing.

Raw polling data from TNS Polska (average n=1000).

“I can’t recall Polish politics having a silly season for years – something always happens”, remarked former Polish prime minister Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz at the height of the holiday period in late July. The summer of 2012 was certainly in keeping with that observation. Both parties of the ruling coalition were hit by scandals which might have been expected at least temporarily to damage their standing in the polls. Evidence emerged to suggest the involvement of the PSL in clientelistic and nepotistic practices, while the downfall of shadow bank Amber Gold drew attention to the activities of premier Donald Tusk’s son Michał.

The Euro 2012 football tournament in June was seen as a test of the capacity of the Polish state and a symbol of how far the country had come in catching up with its Western neighbours. Despite the poor performance of the national team in the Euro 2012 tournament, Poles departed for their summer holidays buoyed by a certain pride in the success of the tournament as a whole, or at least a sense of relief that it had not lived down to prior expectations. However, it did not take long for reality to furnish fresh examples of corruption, mismanagement, state weakness and political cynicism.

In mid-July, a secret recording was leaked in which the former president of the Agricultural Market Agency, a body subordinate to the Ministry of Agriculture, spoke freely of the nepotism and political chicanery indulged in by individuals connected with the Ministry of Agriculture and state-owned enterprises operating under the aegis of the Ministry. While it is widely believed that such enterprises remain riddled with clientelism of all political stripes, the leak was seen as confirmation of the notion that the PSL is particularly prone to such activity. After the end of communism, the PSL inherited a substantial network of local structures from its communist-era forerunner, the United Peasant Party (ZSL), and its organisational strength ‘on the ground’ is credited with helping it to remain in parliament despite the waning of the peasant class from which it draws support. While Polish parties are apt to accuse each other of using state resources for their own benefit, there is a general perception that the very strength of PSL’s local structures both enables and requires it to exploit opportunities for patronage and nepotism.

Polling figures from TNS, adjusted to include undecided voters.

The leaking of the tapes cost Minister of Agriculture Marek Sawicki his job, and led to a period of tension between the two coalition partners while premier Tusk deliberated over whether to deprive PSL of the ministry entirely. Regarded as a potential challenger to vice-premier Waldemar Pawlak for the position of party leader, Marek Sawicki used his ministerial post to increase his public and media profile – most recently through some universally ridiculed advertisements promoting the successes of Polish agricultural policy, fronted woodenly by Sawicki himself and airing incongruously – and expensively – during the half-time breaks in Euro 2012 transmissions. The rivalry between Sawicki and Pawlak led to speculation that the leak had been engineered to discredit the pretender, eliminating him from any future leadership contest. However, before the story could ramify further, it was swept off the news agenda by a much more dramatic scandal.

At the end of July, the Polish charter airline OLT Express collapsed after losing financial liquidity. OLT was owned by shadow bank Amber Gold, which had already been the object of some suspicion in financial and regulatory circles but which continued to attract investors tempted by its supposedly gold-backed double-digit investment accounts. After the collapse of OLT, concerned investors found that they could not withdraw their money, and it rapidly became apparent that Amber Gold was essentially a pyramid scheme. As the investigation deepened, the owner of Amber Gold, Marcin Plichta, was discovered to have several previous convictions for crimes of a financial nature. However, in each case his sentence was suspended, and despite subsequent convictions which breached the terms of the suspensions, Plichta served no jail time.

This event gave the opposition – and PiS in particular – two lines of attack against PO and Tusk. Firstly, it enabled them to renew the charge that PO had abandoned adequate oversight of a malfunctioning justice system and – by ignoring warnings from regulatory bodies and the secret services about Amber Gold – failed in a duty of care to ordinary citizens who had invested their money in a scam. Secondly, the questionable association of Michał Tusk with Amber Gold turned the heat on the premier himself. In a pre-emptive newspaper interview, Tusk junior admitted that he had undertaken freelance work for OLT Express while employed as an analyst by the airport authorities in Gdańsk. Premier Tusk’s declaration that he had warned his son about the wisdom of dealing with Amber Gold led his critics to charge that he had exploited confidential knowledge for the benefit of his family while neglecting to pass on the same information to investors.

Estimated number of seats if elections were to take place tomorrow, based on most recent adjusted polling results.

With Plichta under arrest and PSL’s party congress yet to come, the consequences of these scandals for both parties remain to be resolved. However, as both the raw and adjusted polling figures indicate, neither party has yet suffered unduly. PSL remains in its typical mid-term position, bumping along the electoral threshold. PO retains its slight advantage over PiS, albeit an advantage that dips in and out of the overlapping margins of error. Although the summer has furnished a number of opportunities for the opposition to inflict damage on PO’s reputation, ‘Teflon Tusk’ appears to be resistant to attacks that call into question his personal competence and probity. Apparently recognising this, PiS has turned its attentions to the state of the economy, seizing upon a downturn in public confidence and echoing the concerns of some economists that the forecasts on which the government is basing its budgetary preparations are too optimistic.

While the summer season has been far from silly, it has not seriously affected the overall dynamic of Polish party politics. In fact, it could more accurately be said that Polish party politics currently lacks any real dynamic to speak of. The absence of any significant shifts over the last few months suggests that the coalition could still hope to return to power in much the same shape if snap elections were called, while the other minor parties remain large enough for political significance but small enough to be peripheral to the main contest. As the largest opposition party, PiS has the most reason to be discouraged. Despite propitious conditions, it remains unable to break through the glass ceiling of 30% support, and the leadership of Jarosław Kaczyński seems ever less a stabilising virtue, and ever more a barrier to the party’s progress.



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