| Author (Person) | Lucas, Edward |
|---|---|
| Series Title | European Voice |
| Series Details | Vol.11, No.39, 3.11.05 |
| Publication Date | 03/11/2005 |
| Content Type | News |
|
By Edward Lucas Date: 03/11/05 Every couple of years since the early 1980s, I make a really big journalistic mistake in covering Eastern Europe. I think I may have just made another one, in writing that Polish politics was finally coming right after 15 years of false starts and missed opportunities. I hope it won't be as totally wrong-headed as the first one I made in Poland, in 1986, when I was a BBC journalist pretending to be a language student in Cracow. After weeks nosing around the workings of the planned economy, Communist-run politics and society at large, I concluded confidently that though communism was totally discredited, the remains of Solidarity were too weak to force its collapse. Second, even if there were economic liberalisation, creating a market economy in Poland would take a decade. I could hardly have been more wrong. I completely missed the effect that the Soviet economic and political decline would have on the morale of the ruling goon-bureaucrats. And I should have realised that the formidable skills that Poles had developed in informal cross-border trading were the ideal preparation for capitalism. A similarly pessimistic tunnel vision made me doubt that the Baltic states would be able to get rid of the left-behind Russian forces in the early 1990s, or that organised crime and corruption could be tamed anywhere. But the rest of the time I've tended to be too optimistic. I was sure that the collapse of Communism would lead to an explosive rise in productivity, as human potential was liberated from the artificial shackles of totalitarianism. That was true in some industries and some countries (most notably Estonia). But I hugely underestimated the importance of honest strong institutions and high-quality public goods. All too often, that wonderful entrepreneurial drive was dissipated in queuing to bribe bureaucrats and long journeys on terrible roads. Roughly half my mistakes have come from underestimating the way in which people will get round obstacles given the chance. And the rest are because of a facile belief that because something is obvious, rational and beneficial, it will happen. That, I fear, is what I just got wrong in Poland. It seemed so obvious a couple of months ago that the two victorious right-of-centre parties, Civic Platform and Law and Justice, would form a coalition government. It would be insane for them to squabble and end up with a minority government, or a coalition with the populist political lepers, or worst of all, no government and new elections. That would infuriate already deeply cynical voters and confirm the well-justified suspicion that Polish right-of-centre politicians are a bunch of quarrelsome lightweights incapable of organising an impreza in a browar. I think I missed two things. One was the effect of the collapse, shortly before the election, of the ex-Communist Party. It was once a real threat: a well-organised crony-capitalist elite with dodgy intelligence connections, gaily swapping wealth for power and vice versa. Without it, the two conservative parties concentrated on their differences rather than their similarities. The other was the self-destructive, self-indulgent streak in the Polish national character. "What's the point of being sensible when the Russians may come back tomorrow?" is an ingrained, half-buried reaction that I have encountered time and again there. I had thought it was changing: I have watched driving habits, punctuality, business manners and other social mores change out of all recognition in the past 15 years. How silly of me to think that the political class would have followed suit.
Comment on the political situation in Poland. In late October 2005 coalition talks between the two victorious right-of-centre parties, Civic Platform and Law and Justice failed. Law and Justice (PiS) went on to form a minority government. |
|
| Source Link | http://www.european-voice.com/ |
| Related Links |
|
| Countries / Regions | Poland |
