"It’s not a crisis, it’s a result" - said Stefan Kisielewski, nestor of anti-communist opposition when talk of a crisis in the “advancing system” appeared. Today, when talk of a crisis in the systemic transformation and democracy in Poland is common, his words again fit like a glove. This is not a crisis – it’s a result. The result of these and not other political and economic choices made after 1989 by a few subsequent governments.
The ruling post-communist party, after less than three years, exploded with a bang. It leaves behind a country enormously in debt, immersed in scandals and paralyzed at the very moment when entry into the European Union requires the allocation of special resources on the co-finance of common development programs and particular agility from public administration.
The departing Prime Minister, Leszek Miller, boasts significant economic growth, it is true, but there is no doubt that growth was driven by a beneficial reevaluation of the euro to the dollar for Polish exports and indebtedness past the point of common sense. These debts mean that the eventual fruits of growth will be eaten up by interest payments on drawn out loans for some time and signal the necessity of buying treasury bonds. An urgent and soon to be more urgent need has become a significant reduction in expenditures from the distended budget, especially in relation to social spending. The short-sighted policy of buying votes by generously doling out pensions and benefits, pursued to this point, has led to a situation in which 13.2 million Polish citizens live from some sort of state-funded support today, about 100,000 more than those who work. Maintaining that course is certain catastrophe.
However, on the other hand, undertaking essential reforms is certain political suicide. Twenty-percent unemployment, a catastrophic situation in the health care industry, the emergence of a fresh scandal practically every other day and a compromising political elite make the average voter deaf to all rational arguments. No politician today has enough authority or enjoys enough trust to convince the people to agree to a limitation of their “social rights.” Contrarily, the left, threatened by replacement on the political scene, is struggling through an auction of promises – which looks even more absurd in light of the budget situation. An auction which will be won only by extreme populist Andrzej Lepper, the leader of Samoobrona. His party, until recently a typical, marginal “protest party,” has grown into one of the most popular Polish political powers. It is upheld by the unrefined criticism of politicians and the argument: “We haven’t ruled yet.” The center-right Citizens’ Platform has attempted to form a counterweight to Lepper’s populism, while realizing at the same time that free-market slogans have become rather unpopular in Poland, and has clear difficulties with finding a language for political polemics with populists.
The obstinacy with which the average Pole resists the reforms that all experts agree are unequivocally necessary for the continued functioning of the state should not provoke amazement. That is particularly true in Western Europe, which, while still far from the edge of a breakdown in public finances, is experiencing similar problems.
Although in economic circles no one doubts that Europe will not emerge from stagnation or be able to weather a civilizational race with America if it does not do something with its bloated social programs and inefficient social insurance systems – the average European doesn’t even think about acknowledging this concept.
Just like in Poland, the attempt to enforce the most crucial savings, known as the “Hausner Plan” (minister of the economy in Miller’s government), met with hysterical criticism – similar attempts to make changes in France and Germany immediately mobilized public opinion against the authorities. A pogrom against the French center-right in local elections and half a million trade unionists on German streets are proof that even countries in the “hard core” of the EU are ensnared in the same trap in which the Polish transformation has gotten stuck.
