Skip to main content

The Evil twin

I do not have very much time for the current Polish government.

The current Prime Minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski lives with his mother and a cat. Naturally he is fierce in his denunciation of homosexuality.

His identical twin, Lech, has managed to escape the apron strings- in order to become President of the Republic.

The twins are both backward looking backwoodsmen. Obsessive about who did what to whom during the Communist era, they have not had very much to say about the future. Even Lech Walesa regards them as strange. Their party- PiS- entered into a coalition with the Polish families League, LPR, whose bizarre Catholic jihad agenda has led them to be nick named the "Adams Family League". About from the LPR PiS entered into coalition with Samoobrona- "Self Defence"- whose quasi-fascist policies previously made them verboten as coalition partners. A Polish businessman said to me last week- "at least you know where you are with Lepper (Samoobrona's perma-tanned caudillo) - he is just a perfectly normal sleazy politician, the twins are warped and just plain weird.

The collapse of the coalition amid allegations of corruption should now lead to new elections. The Polish people deserve a better leadership than this ill assorted collection of spooks and misfits.

The opinion polls suggest that the Liberal opposition, Civic Platform, should win- I certainly hope so. The tragedy is that Lech Kaczynski will stay in office. Although most people think that it is his brother who is the evil twin, it unwise to assume his independence in these circumstances.

Comments

Anonymous said…
The Civic Union has a lot to be said for it as an economically liberal and socially tolerant party, but it has not adopted a Liberal identity. It sits with the centre-right European People's Party in the European parliament. Maybe they should be won over for to the ELDR/ALDE and the Liberal International but we need to know why the joined conservatives in the EU first.
10:44 pm
Cicero said…
Granted- One of the component parties, the Freedom Union was in ALDE. I think it is worth pursuing.
9:58 am
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Waiting for the Barbarians

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum? The barbarians are due here today. Why isn’t anything going on in the senate? Why are the senators sitting there without legislating? Because the barbarians are coming today. What’s the point of senators making laws now? Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating. Why did our emperor get up so early, and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s main gate, in state, wearing the crown? Because the barbarians are coming today and the emperor’s waiting to receive their leader. He’s even got a scroll to give him, loaded with titles, with imposing names. Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas? Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts, rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds? Why are they carrying elegant canes beautifully worked in silver and gold? Because the barbarians are coming today and things like that dazzle the barbarians. Why don’t our distingui...
Post a Comment
Read more

Liberal Democrats v Conservatives: the battle in the blogosphere

It is probably fair to say that the advent of Nick Clegg, the new leader of the Liberal Democrats, has not been greeted with unalloyed joy by our Conservative opponents. Indeed, it would hardly be wrong to say that the past few weeks has seen some "pretty robust" debate between Conservative and Liberal Democrat bloggers. Even the Queen Mum of blogging, the generally genial Iain Dale seems to have been featuring as many stories as he can to try to show Liberal Democrats in as poor a light as possible. Neither, to be fair, has the traffic been all one way: I have "fisked' Mr. Cameron's rather half-baked proposals on health, and attacked several of the Conservative positions that have emerged from the fog of their policy making process. Most Liberal Democrats have attacked the Conservatives probably with more vigour even than the distrusted, discredited Labour government. So what lies behind this sharper debate, this emerging war in the blogosphere? Partly- in my ...
20 comments
Read more

Lib Dem v. Tory (Round 2)

The Liberal Democrats stand for a distinct political ideology. It is an ideology built around both socially and economically liberal precepts. In as far as our ruling Labour government can be said to have an ideology at all, it coincides with Liberalism only incidentally. Labour stands for pragmatism, and where it does not there is still a core of values that are collectivist and not individual. Sometimes people are prepared to claim the moral high ground for policies of social solidarity and redistribution of wealth. Liberals may argue in favour of equality of opportunity, we can not argue in favour- as Socialists do- of "and equal society". The reason is simple: Socialism does not work. If one places equality above freedom, then eventually we get tyranny. This is why, while we may argue in favour of a more equal society as being a stronger society, the tools that we may use to gain -in our view- socially desirable outcomes must rest upon freedom above all else. As PJ O'...
14 comments
Read more