Poland News Briefs

• PostEagle
• August 8, 2024
• News From Poland
• 0 Comments

Compiled by Robert Strybel
Warsaw Correspondent
(Updated 7 July 2024)

Court keeps former PM Morawiecki’s conviction in force
Poland’s top administrative court has rejected an appeal by former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki against his conviction for ordering mail-in elections during the pandemic in 2020.  A lower court found that he had done so in “gross violation of the law”. Morawiecki argued that he had wanted to comply with the constitutional deadline for organizing a presidential election but opted for the mail-in ballots due to the Covid pandemic restrictions then in force.  The Supreme Administrative Court was Morawiecki’s only avenue of appeal, meaning that he now has a final verdict against him. Some Poles see the case’s similarity to US Democrats using a court conviction against Donald Trump for political revenge.

Government plans secure wartime communication system
Poland plans to spend $920 million on the construction of an encrypted communication system  enabling secure operation of emergency services and public administration during wartime. Such a system would be resistant to cyber-attacks. It will also be able to activate shortwave and satellite communication in case command and control posts get relocated during a conflict. Poland ha also been upgrading its military with state-of-the-art weaponry, and its armed forces now have 200,000 personnel. Under the previous Tusk administration, the troop strength had dropped below 100,000, and its current goal is to achieve the 300,000 mark over the next few years.

President Duda visits China, hopes strategic partnership continues
Polish President Andrzej Duda has paid an official visit to Communist China where he held talks with its President Xi Jinping. “I discussed the security situation in detail, told President Xi what our position is and what our experience is with regard to Russian aggression against Ukraine and the hybrid attack by Belarus on the Polish border.” Polish-Chinese agreements were signed on promoting bilateral trade, joint investments and the creation of a Polish-Chinese and Chinese-Polish dictionary. In a unilateral gesture, Xi said Poles would now be able to visit China for up to 15 days without a visa. “I strongly hope the strategic partnership between Poland and China established in 2011 will be continued,” Duda said in Beijing

Tusk coalition to continue predecessors’ mega-air-hub
PM Donald Tusk has confirmed that work on a planned “mega-airport” in central Poland will go ahead. Following Tusk’s return to power last December, the decision ended months of uncertainty over the flagship project of his arch-enemy Jarosław Kaczyński’s Law and Justice (L&J) government. He nevertheless accused L&J of wasteful spending on the project. The centrally located site is to be within a roughly 100-minute trip aboard high-speed trains from Poland’s major cities. LOT Polish Airlines are expected to grow in prestige and value as the default carrier providing long-distance international flights for passengers from countries whose national airlines do not offer them.

Tusk administration goes after L&J leader Kaczyński
PM Tusk’s “court attorney” Roman Giertych has reported L&J leader Jarosław Kaczyński, 75, to the authorities for allegedly failing to report a crime.  Several years ago Kaczyński in a letter had warned his party’s junior coalition partner, The Solidary Poland party of then prosecutor general Zbigniew Ziobro against using money from a fund aiding crime victims for campaign expenses. If his warning went unheeded, Kaczyński said Ziobro would bear full political and other responsibility. An avowed Kaczyński foe, Giertych somehow got hold of the letter which he says is an admission of guilt. Tusk can count on the full cooperation of the current prosecutor general Adam Bodnar to pursue the case. Under Polish law, knowing of a crime and neglecting to report it is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

]Law & Justice plagued by defections, regional turmoil
The conservative Law & Justice (L&J) party of Jarosław Kaczyński, which lost last October’s parliamentary election to Tusk’s three-party coalition, has recently suffered a number of defections by former party stalwarts. Infighting has also caused political turmoil in southern Poland’s Małopolskie region. Although L&J holds the most seats in the regional Sejmik (assembly), it has repeatedly failed to agree on a a mutually acceptable candidate for marshal. One L&J faction is led by former PM Beata Szydło, the other by former Sejm speaker and Kaczyński ally Ryszard Terlecki. So far, Kaczyński’s appeals for party unity have fallen on deaf ears.  L&J was established at the start of the 21^st century by Jarosław and his late twin brother Lech, and Tusk’s Civic Platform emerged at roughly the same time.

Ministry calls alleged 25% defense spending cut “fake news”
Poland’s defense ministry had threatened legal action against fiercely opposition TV Republika,  that reported alleged plans to reduce the defense budget by a quarter. The ministry said the story was false and suggested that Russia could be behind it. But opposition MPs claim to have confirmed its authenticity. Journalist Piotr Nisztor published extracts from what he said was a letter sent by the Polish Army’s General Staff voicing opposition to a 25% defense cuts or the period 2025-2028. Russian hackers have been increasingly invading Polish cyber-space and planting fake news in media outlets.

Poland unveils new “slimmed-down” school curriculum
The Polish government has announced its trimmed-down curriculum for the new school year starting on 1 September. Its content has been reduced by one-fifth which the education ministry under leftist Barbara Nowacka claims will give teachers and students “more time for calmer and more in-depth learning.” Plans to downsize the curriculum by 20% were outlined in February, and the education ministry subsequently held consultations with experts, teachers and parents over the plans. “Rather than downsizing, this sounds more like down-dumbing, former L&J education minister Przemysław Czarnek remarked. Even the left-wing daily Gazeta Wyborcza, which normally supports the Tusk camp, noted that many NGOs and education activists complain that their comments and opinions were largely ignored.

Priest alleges torture in jail, Tusk ridicules allegation
Father Michał Olszewski,  has been in pre-trial detention since March. In a letter smuggled out of prison, he described the physical and mental abuse he claims to have suffered. Led away in handcuffs like a dangerous criminal, the priest recounted how his guards stopped at a gas station on their way to prison, let him out to stretch his legs while handcuffed and ate hotdogs as passersby looked on. In prison, he received no food for 60 hours, was given only a glass of tap water to drink and kept in handcuffs the whole time, making it extremely difficult to attend to his physiological needs. Protesters in Warsaw and other cities accused the government of torture. “That charge is too absurd even to comment on,” was Tusk’s reply. Father Olszewski is accused of misuse of funds while building a safe haven for crime victims.

Eco-friendly Polish suborbital rocket reaches outer space
Poland’s suborbital rocket ILR-33 AMBER 2K has successfully completed its mission by reaching the threshold of outer space, the Polish Space Agency announced recently. Launched from Norway, it traveled at a speed of 3,100 miles per hour, powered by environmentally friendly hydrogen peroxide (H202). “This is a breakthrough achievement of the Łukasiewicz Aviation Institute,” said its director Paweł Stężycki. “The Amber is the world’s first rocket to use a 98% concentration of hydrogen peroxide as an oxidizer, one of the most environmentally friendly propellants available. (…) I believe that in a few years our country will have a rocket capable of launching a satellite into the Earth’s orbit!”

Google adds Silesian language to its translation unit
Google Translate recently added Silesian, spoken in the Śląsk (Silesia) region of SW Poland. to the languages available on its translation service. The decision came shortly after Poland’s own president vetoed a bill that would have recognized Silesian as a language. He says it is in fact a dialect of Polish. In Polish, Silesian language is język śląski but in Sielsian it is ślonsko gǒdka. Apart from Silesian, the new additions include Abkhaz, Cantonese, Crimean Tatar, Dinka, Fijian, Jamaican Patois, Luo,  Sicilian and Tibetan.

Housing prices soar in Poland at EU’s highest rate – 18%
Housing prices in Poland were 18% higher than a year earlier in the first quarter of 2024, which was the largest figure in the European Union for the second successive quarter, new figures released by Eurostat (the EU’s statistical unit) show. Poland was followed by Bulgaria (16%) and Lithuania (9.9%). At the other end of the scale, housing prices dropped in Luxembourg (-10.9%), Germany (-5.7%) and France (-4.8%) Across the EU as a whole, prices were up 1.3%.

Out-of-wedlock hook-ups a human right – Poland’s ombudsman
There is nothing new about some men and women living together informally, because that has gone on for years, But feminists and other leftists now insist on making shacking up sound more respectable by calling it a “civil partnership” and want it to also include homosexual hook-ups. In fact. Polish ombudsman (civil-rights spokesman) Marcin Wiącek recently called it a human right that every country was obliged to introduce. He was parroting the left-dominated European Court of Human Rights which last December issued a ruling against Poland for not including it in its legislation. However, President Andrzej Duda, a traditionalist whose term does not expires until May 2025, says he will veto any such bill.

Warsaw sets up Queer Museum in city center
A Queer Museum being set up in Warsaw is said to be the third in Europe and fifth in the world.  It will be located on city-owned property in the heart of the city on Marszałkowska, Warsaw’s main shopping street.  “This museum is very important for Warsaw because it tells the story of Warsaw’s identity,” said Deputy Mayor Aldona Machnowska-Góra at the announcement. After getting into office, one of the first official acts of the city’s hard-left Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski was to proclaim Warsaw “an LGBT Charter City.” Earlier this year he ordered crucifixes removed from city hall.

City hall’s anti-cross campaign triggers Catholic backlash
Ever since Warsaw’s hard-left Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski ordered the removal of crosses from city hall and other municipal buildings, irate Catholics have been protesting. Protesters hold up placards saying “Polska katolicka nie laicka” (Catholic not secular Poland) and point to the constitution, promulgated in the late 1990s under ex-communist president Aleksander Kwaśniewski. It guarantees the right to “hold and manifest religious convictions, individually or jointly, in public or private, through religious observance, prayer and teaching. Poles have a centuries-long history of Catholicism being attacked by German Protestants, Eastern Orthodox Russians and Soviet communists.  And they often recall the words of Poland’s 19^th-century  bard Adam Mickiewicz who wrote: “Under the Cross alone, that sign of our soul, can Poland be Poland and a Pole be a Pole.”

Landmark case: man faces prison for destroying birds’ nest A court in the SW town of Świdnica has convicted a man for destroying a swallow nest, marking  Poland’s first such verdict.
The incident occurred in August last year in the town of Świebodzice in Poland’s southwestern Dolnośląskie (Lower Silesia) region. According to prosecutors, the 42-year-old man, fully aware of the presence of fledglings in the nest, deliberately knocked it down from a second-floor window corner, A witness to the incident found the fledglings, one of which had a severed leg. The woman took care of the injured birds, handed them over to an animal rescue group and notified the police.

Iga Świątek knocked out of Wimbledon tournament
Poland’s Iga Świątek, World No. 1 woman tennis player, was knocked out of London’s prestigious Wimbledon tennis tournament in the third round, losing to Kazakhstan’s Yulia Putintseva 3-6, 6-1, 6-2. This marked the fifth meeting between Świątek and Putintseva, with the 23-year-old Polish player experiencing her first loss in their head-to-head encounters. Świątek’s defeat also ended her impressive 21-match winning streak, during which she claimed titles on clay courts in Madrid, Rome, and the French Open in Paris. So far, Iga, who made her professional tennis debut in 2016, has earned over $250 million in prize money. In 2023 alone, she made an additional $14 million by doing commercials.