Most Poles believe current Sejm (Parliament) in Poland will be better

Well, Po3, it's a question many have been asking, including The Economist and The Financial Times. You conveniently forget that Jaro did exactly that before with holders of that role.

And yes, he may well do it again. There was no possibility of him standing, being electorally toxic, however the speed at which his fellow conspiracy theorist Macierewicz reappeared bodes very ill indeed.

Yes, but to Polo those are just Jewish-owned running dog lackies of the capitalist wreckers.


The question isn't whether The Dear Leader Chairman Kaczynski (who the President of Poland calls "Premier Kaczynski", although we aren't sure what the president calls him when he is summoned to The Dear Leader Chairman Kaczynski's residence in the middle of the night), the question is when The Dear Leader Chairman Kaczynski replaces the puppet prime minister. I'd say it's highly likely to be before the end of 2016.

Well, when you start to wonder things, usually it means that exactly the opposite of whatever you are wondering is gonna happen.

Everyone remember when you and Harry wondered that PiS would lose support and suffer a defeat at the elections :)

Poor you. You really have no knowledge of Poland, do you? We all saw it for ourselves - Kaczyński is all over the TV, all over the media. At 9:01pm on election night, it was Kaczyński talking for 15 minutes with barely a reference to Szydło. For the next week, it was Kaczyński, Kaczyński, Kaczyński. He was all over the right wing media - Szydło was nowhere to be seen. Even after the Paris attacks, it was Kaczyński talking and not Szydło.

Then again, we live here, we see this - you don't.

There speaks someone who is clueless about Poland's political landscape.

That party is entirely Kaczynski's show. Szydlo is only there because his advisors believe that he is unelectable. History repeating itself. He'll fire the puppet premier, take office himself and the government will once again fail.

It's a good time to be in Polish Sejm.

Since 2013, Antoni Macierewicz is entitled to old age pension. He had 3 choices:
A) relinquish old age pension
B) relinquish parliament salary
C) keep both

He chose to keep both, so he also gets a ZUS benefit of over 40,000 PLN annually. He gets parliament salary and parliament subsistence money. He earned almost 140,000 PLN in last year. And this is his 6th term in Parliament.

Other members of Sejm with earnings on the side: Pawłowicz, Szyszko. Szyszko and macierewicz will be earning ministry salary, too (around 13,000 PLN per month), plus the ZUS benefit and parliamentary salary. Over 20,000 PLN per month.

In last Sejm, there were 40 senior members of the Parliament. Only one of them relinquished the ZUS benefit, Tomasz Kaczmarek a.k.a. "Agent Tomek", who became senior citizen at the age of 35. Only one - Edmund Borawski - relinquished parliamentary salary, but he's a wealthy man.

This is not just about Macierewicz, "Agent Tomek", Szyszko and Pawłowicz. A system change is called for. An average citizen becoming senior before the statute age (65 for men, a little over 60 for women) can earn at most 70% of Poland's average. If he exceeds the limit, ZUS substracts that from his benefit. If a senior citizen exceeds 130% of average salary, he won't get old age pension from ZUS at all.

These limits don't apply to members of parliament and disabled soldiers only. There is a loophole. There's no reason members of Sejm should get so much money - ZUS is already out of money.

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Fun fact: did you know you don't need to have your head examined to run Ministry of Defense (MON) ? That's right, you need psychiatric and physical tests to get a firearm permit. But not to control thousands of soldiers, tanks, armoured car and several dozens of warships. Police wouldn't let Macierewicz to get a lady pistol.

Actually, I notice something different this time round. He seems very happy to take all the headlines and make it very clear that it's his show - before, he was trying to control things from behind the scenes, but Szydło doesn't even have a chance of gaining any popularity.

She's a lame duck, and I suspect that the second their ratings start slipping (as they will), he'll throw her out and replace her with yet another puppet.

Will he? I really don't think that The Dear Leader Chairman Kaczynski will be able to restrain himself to simply appointing another puppet, I very much think that he'll appoint himself to the top job.

Well, given that he appears to be openly behaving as the Prime Minister anyway, I'm not so sure that he's bothered about the formal title. If you think about it, he's a genius - he doesn't care about/need the money, he doesn't have to meet all those boring people and take part in all those boring summits, but he can sit in his office and dictate the direction of the country freely.

It's quite surreal that a mere backbencher has so much media time.

And even living there, EVERY single bet you do at Politics was proved wrong.\

Still waiting for PiS to lose the elections? hahahaha

Yes, he is a strategic genius and has more poltical experience than anyone else in the party. Remember it was he and his brother who master-minded Wałęsa's successful presidential bid against the lefty-libertine KOR-ite loons who used a Wyszyński-bashing "Catholic" (Mazowiecki) as their puppet candidate. The ungrateful Wałęsa became the twins' eternal foe after the "Bolek" connection freaked him out and he overthrew the Olszewski government in his now legendary nocturnal coup.

I know you are hoping PiS fail and would prefer to see the least experienced person in charge. But unlike your ilk, the embittered, frustrated losers, those who have Poland's best interests at heart are hoping the "good change" succeeds.

Exactly. A distortion of democracy, not that the party in question believes in it that strongly.

So you're admitting that Szydło doesn't have much experience and that she's not on charge? :D

At least you're admitting it, Polonius.

Even a blinded backer of the all but defunct Platform would know she has never been PM before. Name someone in PiS with more political experience than Kaczyński.


There's a way to deal with an excess of air time for the wrong party: rein in the media like they did in PRL and make sure they are fully free. Free to support PO and denigrate PiS. That's called democracy, Platformer democracy, that is!

I don't think that anyone except the most naive (and to be fair, pis voters are usually naive) would think anything else.

As much as I dislike him, Macierewicz has far, far more experience. He's been there since what, high school? Kaczyński only entered politics in the late 1980's.


Erm, Polonius... I don't know how to explain this to you, but PO are still very much in control of many local and provincial administrations.


Surely I'm not the only one that thinks that the Prime Minister should get more airtime than a backbencher?

A false backbencher. More a rule book eminance grisé

Indeed, that's one way the losers can console themselves. What's left of the Platformers should live out their days in the sticks. There they can't do too much damage until they finally fade from the scene altogether.

Re backbenching, nobody was born a politican. Neither Duda nor Szydło have ever held their present posts before and are now learning the ropes. Fortunately they are under the skilled tutelage of an experienced senior statesman and master strategist. How the PiS team share out tasks and responsibility is less important than what their government achieves. By their fruit ye shall know them - the Good Book proclaims.

Have all the power, but none of the responsibility. What's not to like ?

The govt bears sole responsibility for de-Platformising Poland and getting the country moving. That will include scrapping the worst of PO's mislegislation and resisting Brussels' dictates when it is not in the country's best interests.

You missed the context. Jarosław Kaczyński is playing a puppet master. He's pulling strings, making Duda or Szydło do this or that. But he is not held responsible for his actions by law. If you want to discuss things with me, you can't consider only one sentence at a time.

I think it's you who have missed the point. Like all the losers, you are so intent on badmouthing the winning side that you have failed to realise the PiS government is a team including two junior coalition partners (Gowin & Ziobro). In a team, the better, more experienced player is there to help out the novice who eventually gains his stripes and can manage on his own.

With your ilk it's the bashing that counts. Platformers were boringly on about K being a back-seat driver. When he shared the floor with Szydło to announce the govt line-up, the same chronic grumblers accused him of hogging the show. Let's face it: whatever he does or doesn't do will be frantically lambasted by PO hangers-on and assorted toadies. What else can one expect from frustrated losers!?

And sole responsibility if Auntie Zosia's plans don't work out the way he wants (or even worse, if they do work out the way he wants)?

Name another nation where the Prime Minister needs to share the stage with a supposed back-bench MP when announcing her cabinet.


Not at all, The Dear Leader Chairman Kaczynski could do what is best for the country: resign and never again take any part in politics.

I'm sure you'd like to see M in the PM's chair as befits an inveterate PiS-basher. Maybe Pawłowicz would be better than Szydło?

Actually, I'd rather Kaczyński was just honest and became PM. It's an utter joke for the office to be held by a puppet and shows a total lack of respect for the Constitution.

I actually pity Szydło, because she's being insulted almost daily for being such a puppet.

Which paragraph of the Constitution explicitly or implicity states that a party's leader MUST BE APPOINTED PM? If so, then Pawlak, Kwaśniewski, Buzek, Krzaklewski and Belka should have all been put behind bars. Poles say: Z jakim przestajesz, takim się stajesz. Through your half-cocked bombast and wild claims you are starting the resmble your blowhard crony.

What part of "honesty" and "transparency" are you struggling with today?


They were coalition governments, and therefore had the need to find an acceptable candidate to everyone. PiS have no such problems, hence the honest thing to do would be for Chairman Kaczyński to be PM.

Maybe so but only by the big losers -- the Platformers and their diehard hangers-on and brown-nosers like yourself and your blowhard mate.


What right does a foreigner have to lecture the Polish government on what to do, which post to entrust to whom, etc., etc.?
The wise, strategic thing to do is to operate as a team, and that is what's being done. The ZL is a tripartite coalition including the groupings of Gowin and Ziobro. If they appoitned Gowin PM you and your Brit Bully cronies would also spew your vitriol. The bottom line is. WHATEVR THE GOVERNMENT DOES OR DOES NOT DO, YOU FRUSTRATED LOSERS WHO BACKED THE WRONG HORSE WILL KEEP ********, GRIPING, GRUMBLING, RANTING, RAVING AND FUMING. What else can you do?

What team? Duda and Szydło are told what to do. That's not teamwork, that's a one man state.