Poland’s government. A bad patch

Date: 01/03/03

Distrusted politicians, limp economy, corruption. Hail the new Europe?

IT IS not just the dreary winter that has put Poles in a grim mood. The (ex-communist) Democratic Left government of Leszek Miller, is failing. To Donald Rumsfeld, America's defence secretary, Poland is part of “new Europe”. But for the first time, says one Warsaw professional, despite the country's westward gaze, “I feel as if I'm living in Russia.”

National pride and Polish excitement at the country's re-emergence as an actor on the global stage may have pepped morale up a bit. But trust in the political system - and in politicians - has fallen. The legal system is a wreck: even minor cases take years to be heard. And the economy is in the doldrums.

Its growth of 2.6% forecast for this year will not be enough to cut unemployment or pay for better hospitals, schools, railways and roads. As the vaunted “Polish tiger” comes to look ever more like a mangy domestic cat, foreign investment has tailed off. Peugeot, a French car company, recently chose Slovakia over Poland for a new factory.

Mr Miller and his wobbly government are compounding the misery. Several members have left or been forced out while some notably unpopular ones have dug themselves in. The finance minister, Grzegorz Kolodko, is doing better than markets expected but will struggle to push through the reform of public finances that Poland sorely needs.

On top, there is corruption. Since January, Poles have been gripped by “Rywingate”, a scandal that has threatened to taint Mr Miller. The charge is that Lew Rywin, a prominent film producer, tried to solicit a $17.5m bribe from Adam Michnik, a former dissident who edits Poland's most popular newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza. Mr Rywin claimed to be speaking for powerful figures in the ruling party. In return for the bribe he promised the passage of a media bill in parliament that would allow Agora, the newspaper's parent company, to move into television.

That Mr Rywin asked for the money is not in doubt; Mr Michnik secretly taped the conversation. The rest is fuzzier. They were talking back in July, but Mr Michnik did not publish his story until after Christmas. Why not? He says he did not want to damage Poland's bid to join the European Union, so he decided to wait until after last December's Copenhagen summit, when the country was formally invited to join, all being well, next year - provided the Poles say yes in a referendum in June.

Mr Miller's silence was just as odd. He met Mr Rywin and Mr Michnik soon after the taping and heard the story from both of them. But he did not report Mr Rywin's alleged demand for a bribe, as required by law. Mr Miller says that he thought it all a “grotesque fantasy” in which Mr Rywin had “gone mad for money”. A parliamentary investigation is now trying to discover who in top circles, if anyone, sent Mr Rywin on his dubious mission.

There is no evidence that Mr Miller endorsed, let alone initiated, the alleged scam. “He has no control over corrupt underlings,” says a western diplomat. “The system is rotten.” Indeed, the fact Mr Rywin may have thought he could get away with it is proof, some say, that this kind of thing goes on all the time in Poland, probably up to ministerial level.

Reputations have suffered all round. Mr Miller will probably be exonerated by the inquiry, though his authority has suffered. Mr Rywin looks finished as a public figure. As for Agora, some in the government have made much of the fact that the scandal came to light only after a steady slide in Gazeta Wyborcza's circulation.

Veering rightwards again?

Who has gained? Two far-right populist parties, the League of Polish Families and Samoobrona (Self-defence), have been hoping - so far in vain - to benefit. To their supporters, the Rywin scandal confirms all they have been saying about a nebulous Warsaw elite stealing from ordinary Poles.

So Poland is ill at ease. Breakneck economic growth in the mid-1990s has given way to disappointment and nervousness. Public disillusion, first with the old Solidarity-based parties, now with the supposedly modernised ex-communists, is rife. A prickly wariness about Poland's place in the world is increasing.

Yet, for all these wobbles and worries, the country is secure in its oft-threatened independence and has emerged incontestably as the most muscular of the countries about to join the EU - and as a force soon to be reckoned with at the top table in Brussels. Youthful energy, albeit temporarily frustrated, abounds. Despite recent hiccups, a “new Poland” is still being built.