Green Voice from Poland

Wednesday, 30 June 2010

Two short comments on the ongoing elections in Poland

Quoted in Le Journal du Dimanche (20th June) about the rise in support for Jarosław Kaczyński among young voters: Pologne: Le face-à-face des droites. In NRC next (21st June) about the good result of pro-gay left candidate Grzegorz Napieralski: Homovriendelijke kandidaat deed het goed in Polen.

Monday, 17 May 2010

If animals could vote

For left-wing voters, there does not seem to be a big choice in the coming presidential elections. Both major candidates, Bronisław Komorowski (Civic Platform) and Jarosław Kaczyński (Law and Justice) happen to be right-wingers. Their is no substantial difference in what they say on the war in Afghanistan, NATO, nuclear energy, women's and LGBT rights, relations between the State and the Church, and so on. There is a trade union link in the case of Kaczyński, making him look a bit more "pro-social" of the two, but he is far from the "one-nation Conservative" image of his late brother Lech. Although he is visibly more cautious about privatisation than Komorowski, and much more supportive of the public health care system, he still boasts about his government having lowered taxes (for the rich, to be sure). Even those differences taken into account, no impressive choice for a progressive voter anyway.

Oddly enough, this creates an occasion for hitherto neglected topics to come into the fore. The issue of animal rights, or rather of the complex relations between humans and animals, appears to be quite important. At least, it enables one to really distinguish between the two main rivals. One of them lives with a cat, while the other is a devoted hunter. As it can be seen on the banner profligated by the (hitherto unknown) Animal Protection Party:

I KILL ANIMALS BECAUSE I LIKE IT. VOTE FOR ME!

The fact of Komorowski's killing animals for pleasure is being raised not only by animal rights activists, but also by some of his right wing opponents. The pro-Kaczyński "Rzeczpospolita" published at least two cartoons about the hunting candidate (both by Andrzej Krauze). One of them displays a "Honorary Committee of support for the Hunter" in form of a row of hanged animal corpses, while the other represents voting as a unanimous action by a herd of frightened-to-death animals.

The other side raises the issue of human-animal relations as well. Last Sunday, on the inauguration of the Honorary Committee of support for Komorowski, Professor Władysław Bartoszewski (Poland's former minister of foreign affairs) made an allusion to Kaczyński's being a bachelor: "If Poland is to be degraded to the Rwanda's or Burundi's level of world's attention, it would be the best reason to vote for a man who has the experience in raising fur-bearing animals, but does not have the experience of being a father." This is a wonderful example of how racist, homophobic, and speciesist formulations may still pave their way into the mainstream of respectable political discourse. Though I would not bet it helps.

Anyway, it is fascinating to watch how new topics emerge as a means to make a difference between the two otherwise so similar rivals. I am going to watch it carefully. And as you may have already guessed, I would be more than happy to cede my vote to one of my cats this time...

P.S. Today's news (Thursday, 19 May): Komorowski gives up hunting. Good news. Maybe animals cannot vote, but it seems they sometimes do count.

Adam Ostolski

Tuesday, 27 April 2010

Greens after Party Conference

The previous weekend (16 and 17 April) Polish Greens gathered in Warsaw for the fourth Party Conference. It was my third party congress since I joined the Greens, and so far the most exciting one. We made some changes in the ranks of our leadership: Dariusz Szwed has retained his position of the male co-chair, while Agnieszka Grzybek has been replaced by Małgorzata Tkacz-Janik as the female co-chair of the party. But what is the most important, we had occasion to discuss and update our political programme. What it means to be "Green" in today's Poland? What sort of alternative to the dominant Civic Platform -- and to the political scene in general -- are we dreaming of? We have always been an anti-neoliberal party, but what it precisely means in 2010, seven years after our party's establishment?

After the conference, some are speaking of a "social turn" in our politics, while others claim we simply made our long-held principles more detailed. Anyway, there is a sense of breakthrough. At the conference we adopted four documents: on electoral law, on social policy, on public health, and on education. It is now much clearer what do we stand for in these domains, what sort of electoral reform do we propose in order to reopen Poland's political landscape, and what our vision of social justice is like.

In electoral law we stand for the opening of political scene for new parties and movements by lowering thresholds, as well as introducing restrictions on commercial electoral campaigns. We also support better representation of women in politics and lowering of the voting age in local elections to 16.

In social policy, public health & education we stand for the vision of public services strongly opposed to their commodification and privatisation. Especially health and education should be treated as human rights, and not commodities. We want better protection of women's rights in employment, health, and education policy. We support employment policy based on jobs creation, and not only on the "activation" of the unemployed. We want to foster better work-life balance in order to support public health and create better conditions for gender equality within family. We stand for policies that would diminish social and economic inequalities between people.

Sounds great, ain't it? What we still lack, however, is the power to translate it into binding laws and policies. But no worry, next local elections will be soon.