It seems that the current Polish government, which is controlled by leader of the Law and Justice (PiS) party Jaroslaw Kaczynski, is making every effort to completely discredit his former opponent, President of the European Council Donald Tusk, who has recently been re-elected for a second term without the consent of Poland.
In particular, Kaczynski said that Tusk should not have been re-appointed, because he might yet have to face charges of involvement in the plane crash in Smolensk in 2010, which killed his twin brother Lech, who served as president of Poland at the time.
Meanwhile, in early March, Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz accused Tusk of actions that are equivalent to diplomatic treason, saying that he had been working with Russia to harm Polish interests in connection with the Smolensk plane crash.
“THIS IS PART OF A POLITICAL SMEAR CAMPAIGN”
Past week, the Polish prosecution service summoned Tusk to Warsaw for eight-hour-long interrogation as a witness in the investigation focusing on former chiefs of military counterintelligence who are suspected of cooperating with foreign intelligence services without the official permission. One of these security chiefs had said that Tusk, who at that time served as prime minister and was therefore completely responsible for the intelligence services’ activities, was fully aware of the security services’ cooperation with Russia and had authorized such activities.
“I have no doubt that this is part of a political smear campaign, and its authors are fully open about it,” Tusk told local media prior to his interrogation at the prosecutor’s office. It should be noted that the prosecution service is under the direct control of the ruling party PiS. The president of the European Council also noted that the law prohibited him from disclosing any details of the investigation. “I came here because I respect the Polish state,” said Tusk. Moreover, he expressed willingness to waive the immunity he has as president of the European Council, if he starts feeling that prosecutors will make it impossible for him to perform his duties in Brussels.
CONFRONTATION BETWEEN POLITICIANS
The Day has tried to figure out why the Polish government is so negative about Tusk, the first Pole to take the top job in the EU. We asked Polish experts to tell us also about the whole phenomenon of this Polish politician who won the parliamentary election in Poland twice and has been trusted by the EU so much that he came to lead the European Council and to be re-elected for a second term.
Regarding Kaczynski’s negative attitude to Tusk, analyst of the Institute of International Relations at Warsaw University Andrzej SZEPTYCKI explains it by the interpersonal relations between the two politicians. “In particular, Kaczynski lost the election of 2007 to Donald Tusk, who led the Civic Platform then. The political confrontation between these politicians got worse after the death of the former’s brother Lech Kaczynski in the Smolensk plane crash. So, this explains why the Polish government has opposed Tusk’s second term as president of the European Council,” said the expert.
Ambassador of Poland to Ukraine Jan PIEKLO also shares this view. “Then, in 2010, it was Tusk who led the government, and it is still unclear what happened there. Thus, Kaczynski blames the inconclusive investigation conducted then on Tusk,” the ambassador told The Day.
THE ABILITY TO LISTEN AND LEARN LESSONS
President of the Institute of Public Affairs (Warsaw) Jacek KUCHARCZYK told The Day that “the decade-old personal enmity between the two politicians originated in 2007.” Tusk-led Civic Platform won an early parliamentary election held that year, and this success owed a lot to Tusk’s convincing victory over prime minister Kaczynski in the televised debates.
“Kaczynski felt,” the expert recalled, “that the events of 2007 were a kind of conspiracy to deny him power. Actually, he failed to correctly read the public mood, while Tusk demonstrated that he was able to learn from his mistakes. I mean him taking into account his defeat when he ran in 2005 for president against Lech Kaczynski and his earlier loss in a parliamentary election to the party of Jaroslaw Kaczynski.”
According to Kucharczyk, Tusk started very low and worked hard to climb the ladder. As for his personal traits, the expert believes the ability to listen and learn lessons to be the principal one.
“2007 was a decisive moment in his political career. Tusk succeeded in re-defining himself and his party Civic Platform as pro-European and Kaczynski as a politician acting against Europe, against European values. Moreover, he conveyed this message to the public, because he realized it was time for a change and people were already fed up with the existing situation and felt that post-communism was not really an ideology.
“Thus, Tusk defined his place in the political struggle in a certain way and was able to attract voters to his side, because it was not clear in 2007 where Kaczynski would lead the country if he wins the election. Meanwhile, Tusk became a kind of spokesman for pro-European and liberal-minded public opinion. He was always seen as one who can effectively stop Kaczynski and his cohorts,” Kucharczyk told us.
AN HONEST BROKER ON THE EUROPEAN COUNCIL
He believes that Tusk did right by agreeing to become president of the European Council. “In the middle of the second term of his tenure as prime minister, the public was tired not so much of Tusk but rather of the policies implemented by the Civic Platform-led cabinet. Public opinion was mostly looking for something new. For almost eight years, the government implemented some sort of centrist policies that made many people in the left segment not very happy. Thus, they faced opposition on the left and the right alike.
“Meanwhile, it was also Poland’s first turn to have a Polish politician in such an important position in the EU, the high point of its policy, a chance to get Poland’s voice heard in the EU and therefore make it an important European player. Economic development and our demographic situation allowed for it,” noted the expert.
According to him, it would have been irresponsible for Tusk not to accept the offer to become president of the European Council in 2014. Had he remained in Poland, he would have been unlikely to do better in the election of 2015 than Ewa Kopacz, so it was a doubly justified decision, Kucharczyk concludes.
He also said that Tusk had coped perfectly well with his duties as president of the European Council: “At first there was skepticism about whether he would cope with this job. However, Tusk has proven in his two years and a half in power that he can listen to what other people say, which is important for political success in Poland just as for that in the presidency of the European Council. This institution, the most important in the whole EU, includes very important people with big egos. Therefore, it is important to manage such a group of individuals and be respected. Because of that, presidency of the European Council should be held by a former prime minister at least, as European leaders want to have a person they can respect in this position. The person in this position is expected to be an honest broker and at the same time to direct the European Council’s work to an extent. They should both listen and generate some solutions.”
THE BIGGEST THREAT TO KACZYNSKI
Kucharczyk believes that the current Polish government’s assault on Tusk, which has been kept up even after his re-election as president of the European Council, can be explained as follows:
“The thing is Kaczynski and the current government see Tusk as the greatest threat to the continuation of their power. The PiS party is not very popular in the country despite some claims to the contrary, and Kaczynski is very unpopular, but the fact is that their power comes from the weakness of the opposition. That is, the opposition lacks a trusted leader. Tusk, meanwhile, is the most likely leader of the opposition.
“When he left the post of prime minister, he was not very popular, because people were disappointed with some of his reforms, including the pension one. However, now, since he has moved to Brussels, his credibility has been on the rise, especially after these clashes with Kaczynski about Tusk’s re-appointment as president of the European Council. He has again become a leader in the fight against the PiS.
“Kaczynski feels that Tusk can remove him from power, like he did in 2007. Therefore, he does his best to ruin Tusk’s reputation here in Poland. This explains all attempts to portray Tusk as complicit in the Smolensk plane crash. Kaczynski knows that he is not. In fact, if someone is to blame for this crash, it is his late brother, who did not want to land anywhere besides Smolensk.
“Therefore, the Smolensk disaster story performs two functions here. The first is to discredit Tusk, and the second is to cover up the fact that it was president Lech Kaczynski and his office who organized the fatal trip, which killed a hundred of people. This is actually an attempt to divert attention from the real causes of the crash.”
