PO-PiS again neck and neck

I doubt that will ever happen. PIS and SLD have more in common politically - not that they'll ever make a coalition, and we should take note of what happens on the political landscape before the next election. One thing is clear though - other parties will make sure that PiS don't get in through the back door again.

Like a mantra your keep repeating the notion of other parties ganging up on poor PiS. At present PiS-PSL seems the most plausible to me. But if Tusk and Kaczyński somehow managed to rise above their petty ambitions, PiS-PO would be possible. Recall how that coaltion was to have been created but failed to materialise. PO came up with all kinds of weird proposal like holding coaltion talks on live TV -- something never done anywhere. PiS grudgingly consented but piolticians ended up smiling at the cameras, adjusting theri ties (the slob chic hadn't set in yet!) and nothing came of it. Although they lost, PO were offered the same number of cabinet posts as PiS but still kept bickering until the whole project fell through and Kaczyński was forced to seek outside help. Giertych was OK, but Lepper was a total flop..

Giertych was a disaster. And as you know, PiS without the coalition was thrown out by the voters I a huge turnout. The chances of them ever getting back are remote.

Admittedly he only had two years, but he did beef up the educational curruculum with more history and culture. values More importantly, he believed the school should not only teach facts, but should bring pupils up to be decent, patriotic Poles. Lefitst, gfloablisst and assorted one-worlders of course reject such ideas, so that makes Giertych the bad guy in their books.

Did he really? I seem to remember that the students of Poland very much thought otherwise. And that's before we even get to the fairy tales that his daddy wanted to be taught as facts.

Which is completely useless in today's world. We don't need people to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of Polish history, we need people that can do mathematics and science.


Which is why the educational establishment hated him so much - schools are not for indoctrinating pupils with any one belief. His version of "patriotism" was soundly rejected.


No, they rejected him because he was putting nonsense first.

History - mostly - won't put food on your table.

What was interesting was that he completely failed to actually reform - well - anything. His greatest success was banning mobile phones in all schools - which did nothing but irritate everyone.


Which is exactly what was happening elsewhere.


The PSL won't risk electoral suicide to enter coalition with Kaczynski. They know what happened to LPR and Samobroona - and they won't risk their position in Polish politics for that.


Too many personality conflicts. PiS wanted to control the power in Poland, PO didn't want to allow them total control - which was fair enough.


I think PO wisely realised that staying away from power for 2 years made a lot of sense - they let PiS make a mess of things and walked into power as a result. Had they shared power, they would've taken the fall along with PiS.

Aren't there enough pre-programmed robotic earning machines who cannot see anything beyond their horse blinkers except their e-gizmos, equations and filthy lucre? Giertych represented Christian humanism that transcended the purely materialistic and pedestrian.

See, Polonius, you've lived your life, you've made your money and so on. But with today's students, they need an education that will provide them with employment afterwards - and that means mathematics and science. The graduate unemployment rate is high enough - we don't need more "humanist" graduates, we need less. A lot less.


No, he represented what happens when you let someone fiddle with education for ideological purposes.

The protests against him says it all.

You mean people who pay the tax that your church eagerly gobbles up? No, there are not enough tax payers in Poland.


And which thought itself to be above science, which is not a good thing for an education minister.
And of course he gave his name to the Giertych-jungen with their delightful habit of giving Nazi salutes round camp-fires.

Would that be some of the books he removed from the school curriculum?

He replaced them wtih the Polish classics which had been yanked by the commies or their post-commie successors.
Now the Gang of Tusk has again re-pauperised the collection. Probably only the future PiS-PSL government can remedy the situaiton.
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Which does nothing for widening one's view of the world. In today's connected world, limiting oneself to Polish books is rather restrictive.

Not to mention that at least in the Polish education system, these things are all connected - so removing the books did nothing but make people stupid. Again, he should have left politics out of education.


Strange that you would regard such classics as The Master and Margarita as being "papuerised".


Grasping at straws, aren't you Polonius?

The PSL have shown exactly zero interest in coalition with PiS.

For now. Use a little imagination and think ahead. Are you truly unable to envisage various scenarios? Do you truly believe things never leave their rut? Merkel teaming up with lefties sounded like mixing petrol and strawberry jam, but somehow...

That wasn't unthinkable - Germany had a previous Grand Coalition, and they are quite common in Eastern Germany. Neither party had anything to lose from being in coalition with the other too - unlike any party associated with PiS.


I can't imagine a situation in which the PSL would risk their "niche" for short term power in Poland. They know exactly what Kaczynski did to his previous coalition partners and nothing has changed at all. In a sense, the worst situation for PiS would be winning 40% of the vote but the rest of the vote going to PO/PSL/SLD/RP - they would end up losing despite getting the most seats.


As I keep saying, with Kaczynski, they can't win. Don't you recall the PJN lot saying the same thing? They can't win with him.

What do you have against sweeping out crooks, racheteers, connivers, parasites who have wormed their way into the administation and economy for their own selfish benefit and to the country's detriment. That's what PiS is all about: Law and Justice.

Don't forget TKM, the acronym for a particularly crude expression of Lech Kaczynski's when he took office and was talking about corruption. Translating into English as "now it's our f***ing turn"...

Except it wasn't. We saw that PiS protected their own and had a habit of replacing "enemies" with their own men. Don't you recall how their man in TVP was fired? Or their way of appointing young people with little/no experience to powerful positions?

I suspect that had they came into power and replaced people with others who were the best people for the job rather than those that sucked up hardest to Kaczynski, they'd still be in power today.

Plenty of classics there - including ones he removed. I wonder what he had against Ferdydurke?

So you're against giving young people a chance to develop and gain experience? Interesting!

I'm against giving such people positions of power and leadership in public sector jobs when they have little to no experience.

Farfał becoming vice-President of TVP was a great example of nepotism by PiS.

PiS 43%, PO 32%

PiS contiue to lead the pack with 43% support against 32% for PO. Ex-commies in Poland can count on 12% backing and PSL barely squeaked through at 5%. Palikot is out of the running.

Depending on the final outcome, 43% is close to the level at which the winning party can go it alone without seeking coalition partners.

Further disaster for PiS - if they can only get 43% support in the middle of summer when everyone with means is on holiday, then when everyone is back, their numbers will fall again. It's nothing new in Poland - the "Conservative" vote always increases in July/August. I'd argue that this was one of the reasons why AWS won the 1997 election.


That number is at least 47%. Furthermore, PO/SLD there can count on 44% of the vote, which with the 5% of the PSL gives them a viable coalition.

Don't forget that with Ruch Palikota, it's highly unlikely that their supporters are at home to answer the phone.

Such a coalition would spell the end of PO. Close to half its members represent the patriotic, Christian Democrat, pro-Solidarity and firmly anti-commie orientation. If Tusk annoucnes plans of a PO-SLD coalition during the campaign, he willl lose a large chunk of the electorate. If he keeps it secret and proposes such a coaliiton after the election, then new break-away groups will surely appear. You probably run in circles that do not expose you to family members who have suffered, been persecuted, discriminated or otherwise wronged by PRL, hence you tend to slough off patriotic, anti-PRL sentiments.

Not really. If you care to remember, the Unia Wolnosci supported the Constitution in the referendum, and PO has very strong party discipline. The failure of Gowin to attract almost anyone to his 'side' suggests that they have no problems in this respect.


But to those members, the thought of PiS gaining power (and them being victimised as a result) would override any feelings about the SLD.


Except he won't. Parties do not announce such plans in advance.


They will not break away if they know that the alternative is being in opposition. Do you think Ziobro would have left PiS had they been in government? Nope. Splinter groups only tend to emerge when there's no benefit to staying in the party in question - look also at AWS in the 1999-2000 period.


The PRL is dead Polonius, as you well know.

As for the circles I run in - as far as I remember, my circles include many people who have had family members who suffered in the PRL. They certainly didn't obtain considerable financial benefits to promote the regime, especially abroad. Unlike some, my people don't have to bear the guilt of collaboration. It certainly seems that those who benefited most from being collaborating scum decided to become patriots when they realised that their honey pot had dried up.

Once they're elected on a PO ballot they are free to set up their separatist koła poselskie. Dunno if that's done elsewhere, but in Poland once you're elected you can change colours, become an independent, set up a new group or whatever. If a large enough group were to rbeak off (70-80 MPs), then their chances of re-election 4 years later would not be bad.

Right now all we can do is hope, pray and speculate.

They can. But would they dare, given that the opposition has vowed to take all sorts of revenge once they take power? They certainly wouldn't risk being in a position where they are relying on Prime Minister Kaczynski - he already showed what he thinks of coalition partners and perceived enemies.


The voters would certainly punish them - look at how the AWS parties were punished in 2001 by the voters. If you've enjoyed 8 straight years of being associated with the party in power, and the opposition has vowed to cleanse the ranks should they be elected - would you take the risk? Or would you play it safe and argue from within, like Gowin has done?


Personally, I prefer to get out there on the streets and make sure that PO get re-elected. Hoping and praying doesn't win elections, but good old fashioned hard work does.

Anyone who looks forward to 8 more years of oldboy misrule needs to see a shrink.

I look forward to 80 years of PO rule, not just 8. We need to make sure that Jaroslaw Kaczynski never, ever, ever again gets to taste power.

Have you deliberately misspelt his name as a sign of disrespect or simply out of sheer ignorance?: It is Jarosław Kaczyński. In Poland, a diacritically accented letter is a separate letter of the alphabet and its absence amounts to a misspelling.

Not having a Polish keyboard is no excuse because the Polish letters are all available directly above.

You're welcome to ask the mods for a judgement on that one.

For what it's worth, Poles rarely use the accented letters in communication, particularly in text messages.