Polish populist government crossed the Rubicon leading to dictature
Administrator Thursday, 26 January 2012 08:51
Polish populist government signed ACTA this morning. And crossed the Rubicon leading to dictature. The office of the prime minister erased critical comments of citizens from its Facebook profile, and blocked critics from further commentaries on the page. Yes, this is how Polish regime operates. It controlls a plethora of mainstream media (like all state- owned media, private network TVN and largest daily- Gazeta Wyborcza), and opponents have shaby Internet websites and social media. During public discussions often no voices from audience are permitted- Donald Tusk rules in a soft authoritarian way. During parliamentary elections pro- governmental TVN has not allowed leaders of non-parliamentary parties to debate with leaders of the regime parties. Some of the non- parliamentary parties not allowed to debate got then even 10 or 11 % of votes. There were cases of unexplained outright large-scale election fraud, like in the regional elections in Masovia, where spread of invalidated ballot cards somehow, if plotted on a map, creates a shape exactly matching the administrative borders of this region.There were two cases where oposing lists were not allowed to register their candidates.
Due to system of party and campaign financing, no democracy exist on local, regional and national level. Only those able to spend 60 or 70 Thousand Euro on campaign may think to candidate, and those willing to fund a party have to obtain 3-5 million Euro in order to reach the voters and pay bribes to media owners to be aired. Critics are so rarely allowed to governmental media like TVN, that directly before the elections opponents of government policies screened their comments on the company's headguarter using video projectors. And owners of the station ordered their workers to remove too liberal comments from their social nbetwork "kontakt tvn", as we learned. One of station owners, Mariusz Walter, in communist times was designated to become director of totalitarian propaganda. Now he controlls vast media empire, and has only one private competitor in the nationwide terrestial network. Ties from former regime are still strong, even old documents are used as a blackmail to gain more terrestial frequencies and block any competitors.
I do not read any paper media in Poland, as critical opinions seem to exist in larger quantities only in Internet. International democracy ranking of the Economist Intelligence Unit puts Poland on equal position with Brasil- as failed democracies. Strange- I just spent all December in Brasil and now have the impression that we, Poles, have radical dictatorship even in the media. Where comment is not free at all, at least in the "official" media, whose names are repeated in the TV stations licensed by rulign political class. If you want to have a newspaper in Poland, You have to make it. Especially in province, where media is few, You have situations exactly like in Russia- for example public transport is suspended, tramway tracks are dismantled, and people have no way to air their comments, except for social media like Digg. Especially on local level Poland is dominated (in 70 %, as media researchers claim) by governmental media, that are often printed by regional and local governments themselves. Science is nearly non-existent, scientific libraries are absent, and government produces statistical data that were correct a decade ago, but now critical economists react with disbelief, claiming that, as in Greece, government took total control over statistical office. Demographic data do not match at all, and even when census was conducted, comments were spread by those who collected the data it, that even the demographic data was being falsified when summed together.
Below: captions from Zielona Góra, 50 km to the east from German border. The town saw its largest protests since 1989, with mostly young people protesting. Older people do not use Internet and tend to be heavily manipulated by pro-governmental television.
