Poland
Polish Government Of Moral Superiority
Warsaw, Poland 9 March 2006 - Poland’s government, elected in the fall of 2005, has shifted the country’s position on the European Union. This shift is in line with the attitudes that now prevail in the country and that are creating turmoil within the Polish parliament.
Mr. Buras, of the Willy Brandt Center, after seeing Polish President Lech Kaczynski on his visit to Germany this week, described him as "very much a Gaullist" with a conservative view of the world. This new government no longer believes that Poland is a small country that needs the support of the" European Commission "or that it needs partners to get things done or achieve our goal," he said. "It is a kind of moral superiority influenced by history — especially the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 against the Nazis and World War II — which says Poland should be strong and stick to its own vision."
What Mr. Buras saw are what Poles seeing everyday in Poland. Poles see a Polish government that is bent on creating a moral revolution in the country. And it was the President himself who said that Poland needed a moral revolution and that he and his party would work toward that end.
Likewise the current Polish government ruling party, even though in a minority position itself, and one that needs the support of even smaller minority parties, does not seem to think that it needs partners to get things done. Rather than creating working partnerships or relationships based on respect to get things done, the government uses the minority parties and threatens them when it does not get its way.
The government has a Prime Minister who seems to be running a government offstage while the Kaczynski brothers, one President and one leader of the President’s party, press their vision of the country and attempt to rule with a “you’re with us and don’t complain, or you’re against us and we will make you pay for being against us” attitude. The Kaczynski brothers’ attitude permeates the Polish government.
Ministers are approaching things with an arrogance that says that most everyone not in their party is immoral or corrupt. It seems that they think that they do not need the support of anyone to accomplish their goals.
Diplomacy and cooperation often require one to step back from individual moral positions in order to get a consensus. It appears that the Kaczynskis are so convinced of their moral superiority that they will not step back but step on to get things done. And they do not discriminate as to whom they step on.
They are so morally superior that they will not meet with people who disagree with them. For example, party leaders of the minority parties LPR and Samoobrona, both of whom signed a quasi coalition agreement called the stabilization pact, have been refused meetings with Kaczynski until they change their opinions. And because they criticize Kaczynski for this, among other things, Kaczynski has once again (yesterday, 8 March) threatened early elections that might see these parties totally eliminated from representation in the Parliament.
Another round of elections may in fact remove these parties from the Parliament and they may in fact make the Kaczynskis more powerful. The moral revolution may march forward under a more morally superior government.
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