Dear Editor
Polish Londoner
Sunday 17 March 2024
Defence Secretary over Kaliningrad Enclave
Dear Editor
Thursday 14 March 2024
Why I volunteered for a Stoma.
When I met the surgeon at St Mary’s Hospital, I was not ready for her sucker-punch.
“We have to
cut it out. All of it.”
“All? The
whole large colon? Does it have to be all?”
“Yes, and
the anal canal, as well. Up to and including the rectum.”
Only three
minutes before she had said reassuringly, “You do not have cancer yet in your
colon,” So far so good, I thought.
“But,” she
continued remorselessly, “you have high grade dysplasia cells (what??) along
the whole length of the large colon. According to past practice, these cells
will almost inevitably become cancerous. It has been building up over the past
year or so because the inflammation of your colon has lasted for so many years.
As you know you have had Crohn’s Disease, or ulcerative colitis, over the last
twenty-five years. The cells are now too weak to resist a cancerous growth.”
“What other
option do I have?” I asked.
“Well, you
can do nothing at all, and continue with your current treatment, but then
the NHS can do nothing prevent you from getting
cancer.”
As I reeled
from this information, a sudden alarming picture emerged. “Then, do I have to
wear a colostomy bag?” She nodded.
How long
for? “Forever”.
It was like
a death sentence. I only knew a couple of distant acquaintances who had worn
stomas, but I did not know the details of how they lived and had never
discussed it with anyone in the past. Living with such a bag seemed like some
kind of life changing disaster, like going blind or losing a limb. This may
have happened to other people, but, thank the lucky stars, it was not supposed
to happen to me or someone close to me.
This was
like a bolt out of the blue. I had merrily continued with my Crohn’s Disease
over the last decades. I had been told that the disease was incurable, but
manageable. It was an irritant, but at least it was painless, despite its
uncertainties. The condition had caused me to undergo infusions every six
weeks, and the pleasure of a colonoscopy every two years, but this way of life
seemed acceptable and bearable in the long run. I could imagine it continuing
in the same way unchanged into the future.
True,
Crohn’s could be treacherous at times, with its occasional urgency taking you
by surprise, especially when your self-control might relax as you neared a
restroom. It left me embarrassed every now and again, as on a bus, or on the
high street in Tunbridge Wells, or in the middle of the Alexanderplatz in
Berlin, but I had become a past master on clearing myself up to disguise the
mishap. In fact, I described living with Crohn’s Disease with a certain relish
in my travel journal “Chasing Phileas Fogg: 80 Days on the Borealis”. I am 77
years old, but the Crohn’s did not
prevent me from working for a Chamber of Commerce two days a week or
having a very busy schedule for my work in the Polish community.
However, in
November I saw the head of the Gastroenteritis Clinic in Hammersmith Hospital
for what I thought would be another routine appointment monitoring my progress
with the Crohn’s. He looked kind of sad and shook his head gloomily. “I’m
afraid,” he told me, “I have given you this treatment as long as I could, but
now we need to find more drastic solutions. We have observed the possibility of
cancer, following the results of the latest colonoscopy samples we have taken.
This may require some surgery,” he said
ominously. He recommended an appointment
for me at St Mary’s in Paddington with a surgical team. And so, I found myself
in the presence of this lady surgeon with her alarming announcement.
The new
advice was such an unexpected body blow that I was left with the dilemma.
Should I take this radical step to prevent a cancer which had not yet invaded
my cells? Or should I tough it out and carry on as before. Many of my friends counselled against surgery, although
my wife felt that perhaps the surgical option had a certain logic to it.
I read up
the literature on it. What did wearing a stoma, or colostomy bag, entail? My
rectum would be sealed, my large bowel would be removed, and my waste would
pass through the same small bowel directly into a little plastic pouch attached
firmly to my body, which I would empty when necessary and change every other
day or so. It would be a lifetime commitment. There would be a stoma unit at my
local hospital to supervise my progress and arrange for my supply of fresh bags
and other necessary accessories to make those regular changes. It sounded
dreadful.
What were
the dangers, apart from the obvious? An operation is always risky, there would
be an uncomfortable stay in hospital. The brochure helpfully listed the risks,
whether common, less common, or rare. Most were rare but these could include
hernia, wound infection, nerve injury, sexual dysfunction (oh dear!),
significant bleeding, blood clots, abdominal fluid collections, and finally
something headed briefly as “death” .
On the
other hand, the operation, which is helpfully called a laparoscopic
panproctocolectomy, would remove the
risk of developing colon cancer. There
would be no chemotherapy, no long-term pain or risk of eventual death from
cancer. For the surgeon it was a fairly standard operation, under general
anaesthesia, and she would normally be able to perform it through keyhole
surgery. She would slowly remove my infected large colon through my right side
until she reached the link with the uninfected small bowel which would be
allowed to protrude for an inch or so. She would then place the stoma over
that. I had this weird image in my mind of the surgeon slowly pulling out my one and a half metre
colon, hand over fist, wondering when she would finally reach the link to the
small colon.
Some
200,000 people in the UK have a stoma, including famous singers, comedians, and
athletes. It would not prevent them from being active. I was told that I should
be able in time to continue my work and my community activities as before.
After all, Napoleon had a permanent colostomy bag following a gunshot wound,
and it did not prevent him from continuing quite a busy lifestyle, including
coronations, mistresses and staging quite a few battles all over Europe.
I took a
deep breath and said, “Alright, let’s do it!”
Some of my friends urged me to wait, but I saw no need to delay. I asked
the surgeon to give me a date that would allow me to have a book launch for my
latest publication describing my 80-day cruise around the world with my wife.
After that I was committed.
The
operation in Charing Cross Hospital lasted 7 hours. Staying in hospital for 8
days was a drag, but one I had expected. Initially I was linked to various
12-hour infusions, with a so-called Robinson’s bag draining my single kidney (I
had once donated the other kidney to my wife), a cluster of cannulas on each
arm, while my poor willy was intimidated into submission by a catheter
collecting my pee. My stomas were being drained regularly by the ever-patient
nurses. Within a few days the staff had removed the catheter and the Robison’s
bag.
Emptying a
stoma, and sealing it up afterwards, proved child’s play. The real problem was
to learn how to drain the stoma yourself and then how to change it. My initial
two attempts, supervised by a special stoma nurse, left me so stressed that I
nearly fainted each time. However, I realised that this was something I had to
overcome as I would be responsible for this procedure for the rest of my life.
So, I lined up the necessary accessories. These included the new bag cut to
size to fit the stump of the protruding small colon, the ice-cold spray to
remove the old bag glued to my side, the bowl of warm water, three or more
wipes and the black plastic bag to collect the debris at the end. I placed them
on my bedside tray in the order of their use with the opened black bag first.
Then I took a photo of it. After that I proceeded systematically to make the
change. It took less than a minute. I pressed down the sides of the stoma now
sticking to my body. I was the master now. Obviously, there was still a lot to
learn but my recovery was beginning. I was ready to leave the hospital and face
the world.
The initial
aim was to ensure that my waste was not too watery. Initially the contents
would just pour out, but as soon as I had recovered my appetite and had moved
on to more solid food, my output became thicker and left the bag grudgingly. In
time I had to squeeze it out, like toothpaste out of a tube. However, my diet
had to change. Still, I now had to cut the crust off my bread, and the skin off
my fish or potatoes, avoid stringy and high fibre foods, peas and sweetcorn,
raw fruit and veg, and items with pips like grapes and strawberry. I should
choose white bread rather than brown, corn flakes rather than weetabix, tea
biscuits rather than digestives, soft eggs rather than hard boiled. Apart from
that I could eat most foods but should learn to chew them and eat them slowly.
I should avoid driving a car for some 6 weeks, avoid strenuous exercise and
lifting any weights, but otherwise be active. Within 24 hours of leaving
hospital, I was out walking every day, buying newspapers, meeting friends in cafes, travelling on a bus. For her birthday we travelled for a 3 day "dirty" weekend in a riverside hotel in Maidenhead. We travelled there by Elizabeth Line. As for heavy shopping, my wife and I switched temporarily
to ordering our main food through supermarket deliveries. This was the new
reality.
I had
learned to change the bag every day in the morning before breakfast so that the
procedure was not interrupted by sudden spills from the stump of the remaining
colon. By the way, the output was
normally odourless, unless you had eaten some pungent fish or curry. You would
not normally be embarrassed by its content when at work or in a pub or café, and the bag is not transparent.
A month
after the operation I did have one relapse, when I suddenly felt faint and
found myself vomiting violently. The vomiting was so strong it blew off my
dentures. I’m not sure to this day what caused this, except that I had probably
been dehydrated while carrying a heavy bag for a long time. After that, I
always took care to drink a couple of litres of water a day between meals.
(to be continued)
Sunday 10 March 2024
Colonial atrocities on St Kitts
Dear Editor,
Friday 19 January 2024
Holocaust narrative kicked by Netanyahu into the dust
Dear Sir
To Editor of The Guardian
Enough is
enough. Until now the Holocaust guilt-trap which has haunted the post-war Western civilizations has dictated our Middle East alliances, more even than oil. It has rightly
reinforced our sympathy for Israel but blinded us to the Arab sense of
injustice ever since the state of Israel was founded, That historical legacy has
re-emerged in force as Hamas carried out their barbarous rampage through the
Israeli civilian population, murdering, raping and taking more than 2500
hostages. We proudly displayed the Israeli colours in protest and initially
turned a blind eye as Israel sought to recover their hostages and to destroy
Hamas, while killing more than 20,000 Palestinian citizens in the process. These were mainly women and children, but ostensibly, we told ourselves, they were collateral
damage, used as a human shield by the ruthless Hamas leadership. Even as the doubts arose, the protest marches favouring the
Palestinians grew, but we comforted ourselves with the thought that now a
political solution will at last be found, both for Gaza and the Westbank.
Today we
learn that the current Israeli leadership has no such political solution. It is
all purely a matter of Israeli security and the political survival of Netanyahu
and his right-wing cronies. If the war is to continue without a political
solution in sight, then from that moment Western support for Israel must stop
and a ceasefire must be called for by all our Western governments. And if Western
governments are not prepared to do so, then at least Keir Starmer and other
opposition leaders who have bravely supported Israel until now, need to explain
to their many Jewish friends that a future UK government will support an immediate
ceasefire. We can no longer carry the responsibility of more Palestinians dying
if there is no Palestinian state on offer alongside the Israeli one. Israeli citizens
desperately waiting for their hostages to be free must understand this. Unless Netanyahu
is immediately replaced by a government ready to broker a political deal with
Palestinians, then Israel has forfeited our trust and support, and their
sacrosanct Holocaust narrative has been kicked by their own government into the
dust.
Thursday 11 January 2024
Jan Mokrzycki (1932-2023)
Jan
Mokrzycki, who was the dynamic President of the Federation of Poles in Great
Britain for 10 years, died on December 25th 2023 at his most recent family home
in Gravesend, aged 91.
As a
long-term President of the Federation of Poles in Great Britain, this
Midlands-based retired dentist became a dominant figure among the London Poles
as he campaigned for Poland’s entry into the EU and for the rights of Poles in
the UK once that entry was achieved. Along with his Federation colleague, Mike
Oborski, he set up a pressure group in 1995 called “Poland Comes Home”, producing
regular issues of a magazine and the internet to persuade British politicians
and British business of the need for Poland to join what was then the European
Community. He organized public debates on the issue involving British ministers
and MPs, ambassadors of Central European countries and prominent academics. His
letter in February 2001, supporting ratification of the Nice Treaty, which was
to open up the EC to eastern expansion, was circulated to every Member of
Parliament and was quoted approvingly by Foreign Secretary Robin Cook in the
subsequent debate in Parliament.
After
Poland’s accession to the EC (later the EU) and the opening up of the labour
market in the UK to Central Europeans, he considered it his duty to ensure that
young Poles would not face discrimination on coming to the UK. This was the
time when the number of Polish-born UK residents increased tenfold from 60,711
according to the 2001 census to 654,000 according to the 2011 census, and later
topped a million. He opened up talks with British trade unions, such as GMB and
Community, about the successful recruitment of Poles into their ranks, set up a
unit monitoring hate crimes against Poles and liaised regularly with the
Immigration Department of the Home Office in monitoring treatment of Polish
citizens at the border, which included occasional visits to Dover. He circulated
a Polish language leaflet called “A Safe Start” which gave concrete advice on
how to avoid abuse by criminal employers, and he convinced the British Embassy
in Warsaw to help in its distribution. A later 14 page Federation publication called
“How to live and work in the United Kingdom” received a mass circulation with a
print run of 40,000 and was made accessible free of charge at bus terminals and
parishes throughout the country as well as being distributed in Poland by the Polish
Foreign Office (MSZ). The Home Office and the TUC also helped in its
distribution. He pushed for an Early Day Motion to retain the Polish A level
examination, and set up a Polish credit card decorated in Polish national
colours and linked to the Bank of Scotland, in order to encourage Poles to set
up bank accounts, which gave the Federation an added income of £800 per quarter.
The Federation was also able to offer home insurance at advantageous terms.
In 2004 he
condemned the use of the term “Polish Concentration Camp” which had been used
by Michael Howard in an interview with BBC Radio 4, implying inadvertently that
Auschwitz and other camps, had been set up by Poles. This led to a sustained
campaign, supported also by the Polish Embassy, which over time led to the BBC
and British media agreeing to desist from this inaccurate and insulting description.
He also played a leading role in negotiations with the German government over
extending the right of Polish wartime victims of forced labour in Germany and
Austria to receive compensation even if they now lived in the UK.
Jan
Mokrzycki was born in a middle-class family in Warsaw in November 27th
1932, the son of two successful Warsaw doctors. In a number of interviews, he
had visibly described his dramatic childhood during the bombing of Warsaw in
1939 and the subsequent brutal German occupation when he lived with this
grandmother, following the arrest in 1942 of his closest family by the Gestapo,
and the subsequent execution of his father, uncle, and grandfather. His mother survived
the horrors first of Auschwitz and then Ravensbruck concentration camps. Jan
lived with his grandmother and her friends in a villa on the eastern side of the Vistula in
Sulejowek, but soon after the Warsaw Uprising against the Germans began on the west
bank of the river Vistula in August 1944, Soviet officers arrived on the east
bank and expelled Jan’s family from the villa, so as they could observe the
slow collapse of the Uprising. The expelled family spent the next months on a
tomato farm and did not return to the ruins of Warsaw until 1945. After
appealing as a child on Warsaw Radio for news of his family, Jan was reunited
after the War with his mother, still unaware that his father had not survived. Faced
with the possibility of arrest and deportation to Siberia, his mother smuggled herself
and her 12 year old son out to England in 1946 by way of Czechoslovakia and
Austria.
As a child
growing up in post-war Bolton where he was billeted on an English family, Jan
started proper schooling by learning the English language from scratch. In the
meantime, his mother continued to work as a doctor until her retirement in
1983. Young Jan did well at school and by 1955 he was offered a place at
Newcastle University to study dentistry. Jan served as President of the Student
Representative Council at Newcastle University and for one year was on the
executive committee of the National Union of Students. He qualified as a dental
surgeon in 1959 and that same year he moved first to Coventry with his new wife
Magdalena Okonska, who as a child had been deported from Poland to Siberia. He then
settled in Kenilworth and was active in the local Polish community where he
initiated the programme “Poles Apart” on the BBC Coventry and Warwickshire
Radio, which bacame the station’s longest running series.
He was also
active in the local Kenilworth District Liberal-Democrat Party and was an
unsuccessful candidate for the Liberal Democrat Party at Loughborough in the 1970
parliamentary election.
In 1995,
following his retirement, and after serving on the Federation of Poles Council,
he was elected as Vice President of the Federation of Poles in Great Britain,
the main representative body of the Polish community in the UK since 1947. He
was elected President of the Federation in 1997, then served as General
Secretary in 1999 and again as President from 2001 to 2009, and then still as
Vice-President until 2011. He was on the Federation executive for a total of 16
productive years
He also
chaired the Festival Committee in the Noughties which organized annual
festivities at Bletchley Park for several years, building on the reputation of
the Polish cryptographers who first broke the Enigma Code and laid the
groundwork on which British cryptographers like Alan Turing were able to develop the work when the German enigma
machines became more sophisticated.
In 2000, Jan
Mokrzycki was also made general secretary for one term of the European Union of
Polish Communities, of which the Federation was a member. He was also a long-time
trustee of the Polonia Aid Foundation Trust in London which distributed
considerable funds to Polish cultural and academic initiatives.
As a result
of his activities, he was awarded the Polish Order of Merit and the Cavalier’s Cross
of the Polonia Restituta Order (one of Poland’s highest decorations).
He is
survived by his wife Magdalena, and two children, Jan and Wanda, as well as by 6
grandchildren, one of whom, Danusia Francis, represented Jamaica as a gymnast
in the Tokyo Olympics of 2020.
Friday 17 November 2023
Lt Colonel Otton Hulacki 1922- 2023
Otton
Hulacki made an unforgettable impression on all who met him. He was larger than
life, and he treated life as a great adventure, both in his youth and in his
later years, when he travelled incessantly across Europe and beyond. A Polish
patriot, both a victim of deportation and a war hero, an active community
leader and a successful businessman, he won over both adults and
schoolchildren, as well as members of his own large family, with his resilience,
his charm and his sense of mischief.
He was born
in the Polish city of Lwów (now Lviv in the Ukraine) on 2nd of January 1922. His
father was a police officer. Even as a boy he was an active patriot, selling
stamps for the Polish Maritime and Colonial League, as well as raising funds
for the Anti-Aircraft Defence League. Aged just 13, he joined the “Young
Eagles” Riflemen in 1935, and soon he became a junior instructor.
In 1939
after Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, he found himself
in the Soviet Zone. Both occupying powers had instituted a reign of terror and
had declared that the Polish state no longer existed. Despite that Otton volunteered,
as a 17-year-old, to serve in the clandestine Poland Victory Service, a
forerunner of the future Polish Home Army, which was the main resistance group
against the German and Soviet occupation. However, in the spring of 1940, his
father was arrested by the NKVD, the Soviet secret police, and imprisoned in
deepest Russia. Otton himself was arrested a few days later and deported along
with his mother and two sisters on a 3-week journey in primitive cattle trucks
to Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan. Initially he worked in a brick factory and
later he was cut off from his family and made to work in an alabaster mine.
Following
the German invasion of Russia in 1941, the Soviet government came to an
agreement with the Polish government in exile in London to amnesty the hundreds
of thousands deported and arrested Poles who had survived brutal life in the
camps and deportation settlements. A Polish Army was set up in Russia under the
command of General Anders, who became Otton’s great hero. Otton tried to join
as soon as he could get the Russians to release him. On his way south at
Orenburg he miraculously met his father, who had also been released from jail. In
their long journey to join the Army, Hulacki father and son, along with a small
group of Polish and Jewish recruits, including Menachem Begin, future prime
minister of Israel, barely survived disease and starvation.
In March
1942, aged just 20, Otton reached the army recruiting office in Uzbekistan and joined
the 6th Armoured Regiment, the “Children of Lwów”. The army was full of
starving emaciated recruits who had survived Russian camps. Otton himself
succumbed to a serious bout of typhus which he barely survived, on one occasion
waking up surrounded by dead bodies.
The
following year the Polish Army and many of its dependents were able finally to
leave Russia and transfer to Iran and the Middle East. Here Otton was able to resume
his interrupted education while continuing his army training. Having obtained his high school diploma, he returned
full time to his army unit. In 1944 his regiment was incorporated into the 2nd
Warsaw Armoured Brigade which was part of the Second Polish Corps in Italy,
still commanded by General Anders. Six days before the famous fourth Battle of
Monte Cassino in which the Polish Army took part, he was transferred
temporarily from the “Children of Lwów” Regiment to the Advance Tank Supply
Squadron. Despite his young age he was placed in charge of a 38-ton Sherman
tank with a 2-person crew. His Sherman tank was to take part in opening up the steep
and narrow Cavendish Road to enable the Armoured Brigade to muster for an attack
up the mountain towards the rear of the Benedictine Monastery. The road had
been a former mule track constructed that February by Indian and New Zealand engineers
for the second battle of Monte Cassino. It had then been badly damaged by shell
fire during an American attack in the third battle of Monte Cassino. It had only
just been widened again and cleared of mines by Polish engineers. The first of
the two Sherman tanks allocated to this mission, missed its footing and crashed
down the mountain side. Otton, who was in the second tank, managed to continue successfully
for several kilometres with his tank along the dangerous road without further
accident and showed that the road was now passable for the Polish army’s
advance. Otton believed, as he explained to me once with his usual chuckle,
that he was given that task because he tended to speak his mind too often, regardless
of whoever was listening. That I can believe.
After the
battle, 22-year-old Otton continued his training as an armoured brigade cadet
in Gubbio and finished his studies in April 1945. He returned to his old unit participating
in the battle for Bologna and was promoted to sub-lieutenant.
At the end
of the war, the soldiers of the Second Corps had found themselves in Italy on
the side of the victorious allies, but without a home to return to, as Poland had
now been handed over by the Allied Powers to be under Soviet control. What was
worse, Otton’s beloved native city Lwów was now no longer in Poland. The
British government initially urged many of the Polish officers and soldiers to
return to Communist Poland, but Otton and his brother Mieczyslaw, who also
served in the Anders Army, as well as most of their compatriots from Eastern Poland,
knew what Soviet rule was like. They refused to go. Eventually, the British
government agreed for Polish soldiers who did not want to return to Poland to be
allowed to settle in the UK. Along with his army comrades Otton spent several
years learning English and picking up a trade. After further studies Otton went
into the printing business and set up his own successful printing firm. He gained
some profitable contracts printing for foreign airlines, and he also moved into
property.
He married a
young Portsmouth girl, Jacy Stewart, and eventually after two decades living
and working in London, he settled on the Isle of Wight, with his growing family
of two daughters Alexandra and Wanda and three sons Stewart, Otton and Jason.
He has since tragically lost two of his children, Alexandra and Otton, and one
grandson Richard, but otherwise his family has grown, and he has 12 grandchildren
and 10 great grandchildren, with another one due soon. Jacey is here with us today
and is being cared for by her daughter Wanda.
Otton was
initially active in the Polish Students and Graduates Association and was an
active member of the Polish community in London. He was a representative in Wandsworth
for the Polish National Fund, which raised funds for the Polish Government in
Exile. He was a member of the Southampton Polish ExCombatants (SPK) Branch nr
309. In 2008, he became a member of the Executive Committee of the Polish
ExCombatants Association (SPK) in Great Britain. After 2012, when the SPK was
wound up, Otton was Honorary President of an organization consisting of 15 SPK
branches, including Southampton, which wanted to continue their activities, and
took on the name of the Friends of Polish Veterans Association (SPPW). Since
2016 he has been a regular participant in the march past the Cenotaph in London
on Remembrance Sunday and has appeared in many commemorative events. These
included the 75th anniversary of the Battles of Monte Cassino held in 2019 at
the Arboretum in Staffordshire, and the Royal Command Festival of Remembrance at
the Royal Albert Hall the same year, both organized by the Royal British
Legion. On that second occasion he was interviewed live during the performance
by the BBC.
In 1997 he
was active in setting up the Association of Friends of ORP “Błyskawica”, which
commemorated the Polish destroyer, constructed in Cowes, which is celebrated
here because of its role in the defence of its own home port of Cowes during a German
raid. Every year Otton organized a ceremony in Cowes to celebrate that event, accompanied
by representatives of the Polish navy. Otton also set up the fund and the
committee which restored the monument in
Kingston Cemetery in Portsmouth, dedicated to Polish survivors of the 1830
Polish November Uprising against Tsarist Russia. That monument is also the site
of a regular annual ceremony attended by the municipal authorities of
Portsmouth, the local Polish community, with an active participation of Polish
schoolchildren from the local Saturday schools. Otton Hulacki also actively
contributed to the founding of a Polish Saturday school on the Isle of Wight.,
and he was a frequent and popular guest speaker at the Polish schools in
Portsmouth and Southampton as well.
Despite his
age and his disability, as a wheelchair patient, and despite the restrictions
of the covid pandemic, he has regularly attended commemorative events not only
in England, but also in Poland, Italy, France, Norway, Israel, and has rarely
refused any invitation to travel to represent his Polish comrades at such
events. He gave many interviews to magazines, radio and television stations in
Poland, the UK, and indeed wherever he could travel. He attended the Monte
Cassino commemorations in Italy in May every year, up to and including May of
this year. His last trip was at the invitation of the Odra-Niemen Association
in Poland from where he returned barely a few days before his sudden and sad death
aged 102 on September 25th, 2023, in Wootton, when he succumbed to
heart failure.
To his last
days he readily communicated with his many friends by phone and retained his
memory of events and his cheeky sense of humour. He had become something of a
media celebrity but his continued public sense of service to Poland and its
wartime traditions led to his continued promotion over the years, most recently
to the rank of Major, and eventually last year to Lieutenant Colonel. He was a recipient
of the Polish Army Medal, the Monte Cassino Cross, the 1939-45 Star, the Star
of Italy, the Defence Medal and the War Medal 1939-45.
His life
was long and eventful, but he will live even longer in the memory of his
family, his friends, and the Polish community at large. He had served his
country faithfully and his mission, to achieve and promote a free and
independent Poland, was completed successfully. May he rest in peace. Cześć
Jego Pamięci.
Wiktor
Moszczynski
Monday 23 October 2023
Poland returns to Democracy
.
Donald Tusk and Szymon Holownia Finally, on October 15th, with a
high turnout of 74.4%, the Polish electorate decisively rejected the
authoritarian Law and Justice stranglehold on Polish democracy which had
dominated Polish politics since 2015. In the main cities the vote, which
surpassed even the election turnout of 1989 that ended Communist rule,
resembled a massive carnival, particularly of the younger voters, as whole
families turned up with their children to vote and mark what appeared to them
to be a day of liberation. The actual turn out in Warsaw, the capital, was
84.92%.
It had
nevertheless been an uphill task, as the United Right ruling coalition, of
which Law and Justice Party (PiS) was the essential element, had the genuine
support of the less affluent members of society, especially in the conservative
countryside, whom they could keep on side with generous subsidies and increased
pensions. Also, they had stacked the cards with monopolizing state television
and the local press, which they used systematically to mock and denigrate the
Polish opposition parties and the independent minded cultural elites. Any
diplomatic or economic setback was shamelessly blamed on the main opposition
leader Donald Tusk, whom they vilified as simultaneously a Russian and German
stooge. During the election they circulated government propaganda by issuing
four tendentious referendum questions which accompanied the ballot paper.
Despite all this, and despite the sustained loyalty of the PiS core vote
exceeding 35% of the electorate, the remaining 65% went to parties and
coalitions determined to deny a return to power for PiS and its truculent
leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski.
The main
opposition party, the Civic Coalition, led by Donald Tusk, gained 30.7%, while
its two potential coalition partners in a future government, the centre right
Third Way and the Left coalition, gained 14.4% and 8.6% respectively of the
vote. That gave them a joint 248 seats in parliament against the 194 seats
allocated by the vote to PiS. The far-right Confederation coalition gained 18
seats. Similarly, in the Senate the united opposition, organized this time into
one electoral bloc, won 66 seats to the 34 that went to PiS. As for the biased
referendum, less than 50% of the electorate participated by refusing to pick up
the relevant voting slip at the polling booth, so its results were invalidated.
Despite
this clear opposition victory, the PiS government is in no hurry to relinquish
power. The state television is still in their hands, claiming that PiS has won
the election because it has the largest vote, and still churning out its hate
propaganda against the opposition. Its journalists remain defiant as, in case
of being fired, they are counting on getting jobs in the new right-wing media
empire promised by Kaczynski. The state
bank will continue to be headed by the highly politicized PiS nominee, Adam
Glapinski, until 2028. Also, the state enterprises which dominate the Polish
economic landscape, the Constitutional Court and other legal bodies, and above
all the Presidency, remain in the hands of PiS nominees and still follow
Kaczynski’s diktat. So does the present prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki who
appears to have no intention of resigning. The President has already stated that
the Lower House and the Senate will not meet until early November, and even
then, he is likely to give Morawiecki several weeks to try and forge a
governing coalition, even if such a mission has no chance of success. That is
because, even if the Confederacy changed its mind and was bribed into
supporting PiS, the right would still be 36 seats short of a working majority
in the Lower House.
Under the
Constitution, President Andrzej Duda has to summon parliament within 30 days of
an election. He could do it in less time bearing in mind that the mathematics
of the election result are clear. Opposition
spokesmen claim he is under pressure from PiS to delay the loss of power
and to facilitate finding time for its politicians to destroy compromising
documentation. He has promised to speak this week to representatives of each
electoral list of candidates separately. Initially he will seek to winnow out
support from wavering opposition groups to join in a coalition with PiS, but
this is unlikely to succeed. The three opposition parties are due to issue a
clear joint statement of intent on Tuesday declaring their readiness to form a
government headed by Donald Tusk.
The current
timetable following the opening of parliament would begin with the election of
speakers for both chambers of parliament and be able to elect parliamentary
committees dominated by the three democratic opposition parties. These could
include commissions to investigate evidence of corruption and breaches of the
constitution by the previous government. The President would not have the power
to stop them. There would probably be a last-minute attempt by Morawiecki to
seek support in the lower house for a PiS minority government, but judging by
the current mood this will fail. Ultimately President Duda will eventually be
forced by constitutional convention to invite Donald Tusk to form a government.
This process could well be delayed until the end of November.
In all that
time PiS will still be using TVP state television as a crude method of
propaganda, the nomination of rogue judges by the President would continue, and
the army and police would remain under the political control of the current
ruling party, while the current fanatical Justice minister, Zbigniew Ziobro,
who is the initiator of a politically controlled judiciary, remains in charge
of the prosecutor’s office. Eventually Ziobro could be replaced by the new
government, but any attempts to bring the judiciary in line with EU standards,
or to reform the media, could be vetoed by President Duda, who remains in
office until 2025.
Following
the election results the Polish zloty strengthened considerably, and Poland’s
stock market recorded its strongest post-election opening since it was created.
However, there are serious economic problems which the new government inherits.
Some of this stems from the government support for businesses during the
pandemic, but the problems have been augmented deliberately by lowering state
enterprise prices for fuel, dishing out generous social benefits, lowering the
pension age and increasing the defence budget, despite inflation remaining at
9.5%, and while there is negative growth in the GDP and a rising public sector
debt. Much of the current spending is currently channelled through
extrabudgetary funds, which it will be difficult to recover, as these funds are
all run by PiS nominees, many of whom are relatives or partners of PiS
deputies. Admittedly, there is a total of €60bn of EU funding, including €35bn from the European post-covid
Recovery Fund, waiting in the wings for a future Polish finance minister to
claim and distribute, but access to it will be blocked until judicial and media
reforms are concluded, and these too could well be blocked initially by
presidential veto. The opposition parties do not have the required 3/5 majority
in the Lower House to overcome these vetoes.
There could
be similar difficulties from the President in changing the school programme to
drop the nationalist and compulsory
religious curriculums and to reintroduce sex education. It will take considerable
effort to introduce a more liberal law on abortion and to recognize same sex
marriage. President Duda and the hard core PiS opposition would still be
appealing to the more conservative rural electorate to challenge social reforms
were they to be excessively radical. In any case there will also be a broad
spectrum of views on social and economic reforms within the three parties in
the coming coalition. Some opposition leaders have sounded more optimistic
about the future, like the new Warsaw Senator, Adam Bodnar, as they count on
the President eventually succumbing to public pressure over the loss of EU
funding and consideration of his own future. Others hint he could face possible
impeachment for breaches of the Polish Constitution during his presidency.
The road to a more liberal and
democratic Poland remains pockmarked with many obstacles.
However,
whatever these obstacles, the direction of travel is clear. The new
government’s goal will be a more liberal and secular political system
respecting minority rights and an independent judiciary, that would bring
Poland back into the mainstream of progressive and constructive members of the
European Union. Also, its commitment to NATO and to supporting Ukraine in its
struggle with the Russian invasion is likely to be reaffirmed. This election is a turning point not only for
Poland, but for the whole of Europe, as a successful attempt has been made in
the sixth largest European economy to challenge the current trend towards
illiberal politics in Europe, and to keep Europe united in facing the Russian
challenge.
Wiktor
Moszczynski
Monday 2 October 2023
Poland - Putin’s Unwitting European Ally?
The pivotal
parliamentary elections in Poland on October 15th could be a
watershed, not just for that country, but for the whole European project. In
the first place, however, it is a wake-up call for Poland’s more progressive
traditional political and cultural elites who had been in the forefront of the
struggle for freedom during Communist rule and have had a strong pro-European
pro-Western world picture going back a thousand years, ever since Poland
accepted Christianity from Rome, rather than from Byzantium. They face a more
authoritarian, nationalist, and Catholic narrative presented by the present
government, and force fed to the people by the robust message from a virtual
government monopoly on state television, and a bully pulpit in the churches.
Will the Polish electorate, and, in particular, its rural and provincial
element, stay loyal to the government and shy away from Poland’s earlier
Western orientation. The ruling United Right Coalition leadership, headed by
the Law and Justice party leader, Jaroslaw Kaczyński, sees the country as
consisting of a breed of good Poles, who are nationalistic, family orientated
and Catholic, and a breed of “worse” Poles, liberal, atheist, post-Communist,
which have to be kept out of power by all means possible. So, any measure that
helps the right retain power is good. After all, were they to lose power, many
would face charges of corruption or breaching the constitution. That includes a
subservient judiciary, retaliatory measures against the remaining independent
media, an economic policy based on crude handouts, such as the original 500plus
(which initially stimulated the economy and then helped stagnate it),
pre-election reductions in state-controlled motorway tolls, petrol prices,
train tickets in a period of high 9.5% inflation, higher pension and a constant
anti-European, anti-immigrant, ecosceptic buzz in the state media.
Kaczynski
is acutely attuned to the prejudices and fears of poorer families which he can
play unchallenged, dressing up the resulting campaign in patriotic national
colours. He has a rock solid 30% to 35% electoral support which gives him the
key to power, while the opposition parties remain disunited with smaller
parties in danger of not crossing the minimum threshold to win parliamentary
seats.
At the
European level, it is the threat of another illiberal Central European
government maintaining its hold on power and, in tandem with Hungary, working
to challenge and eventually undermine the European Union, over its immigration
policy, which increasingly haunts the EU. Poland has made clear that, unlike
the British Brexiteers, it does not want to leave the EU, but intends to
undermine and change it from within. The current Polish prime minster
Morawiecki has talked of his mission to “rechristianize Europe”. This is made
worse for the EU because of the relative size of Poland which makes it the
fifth largest in the EU in population, and
sixth in the size of its economy. On the outbreak of the war in Ukraine,
Poland was seen, and even admired, as Ukraine’s greatest friend in Europe,
absorbing more that 1.3 million Ukrainian refugees. It has increased its
defence budget dramatically and boasted that it wants to double the size of its
army in the next two years. Poland has been in the forefront of the European
frontier states pressing on their Western colleagues to ensure military and
political support for Ukraine and a promise of EU membership when the war is
over. They have supported the
controversial slogan of Ukraine joining NATO, which is such a provocative
challenge to the Russian Federation.
This stand
reflected the country’s mood and had the support of all the opposition parties
with the exception of the extreme right-wing Confederation movement. In fact,
the Polish government built no camps to shelter the refugees. They did not need
to, as Polish families, Polish institutions, and schools, and churches, offered
that hospitality spontaneously. It was only after a few weeks that the
government got round to offering benefits to Polish families accepting
refugees. Poland was the only country to keep an Ambassador in place in Kyiv
from the first day of the invasion. President Duda, normally a political cipher
for the United Right government (called the “fountain pen”, as signing dubious
government legislation was his regular routine), was admired in Poland for the political
support he offered Ukraine in NATO capitals, for admonishing the German
government for its slow response, and for regularly visiting Ukraine.
So why was
it that in September Poland was at the forefront of blocking Ukrainian grain
exports and then declaring that they were sending no more arms to Ukraine? Why
did President Duda accuse his “friend” Zelensky, President of wartime Ukraine
of “drowning and clutching at straws”? Why did this elicit joy in Moscow as the
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov gloated over “a split between Poland and
Ukraine that will only grow”? Had the Polish government really chosen to reverse
its long-established alliance with an independent Ukraine, which had been a
constant factor in Poland’s foreign policy since 1991, when Poland and Ukraine
first became independent?
The answer
was that this was not a reverse in policy, merely another twist and turn in
Poland’s turbulent internal struggle to retain power in the pre-election
months. To the current Polish government foreign policy is merely an instrument
in the government’s battle for survival. In fact, Kaczynski and the initial
party leadership did not know any foreign languages and were completely
oblivious to public opinion abroad. The only Western leader they could identify
with was Donald Trump and they were among the last to recognize the last U.S.
election results. They have consistently challenged EU directives and European
Court of Justice rulings, and have kept up a negative campaign in their media
against opposition leaders who share the EU’s liberal values. They have
maintained a consistent negative campaign against Germany, whom they treat with
almost the same hostility as Russia, equating the EU’s challenge to Poland’s
judicial reforms with Germany’s bid to dominate Europe and subjugate Poland’s
sovereignty. They also equate the opposition leaders, and particularly former
EU statesman Donald Tusk, with being German agents. In order to embarrass the
opposition, they dug deep into Poland’s wartime trauma of German occupation, to
present Germany with a £1.2tn bill for war reparations. This negated Poland’s
earlier agreed settlement of war claims. The government hoped that the
opposition could be manoeuvred into appearing unpatriotic by opposing the
claim. (It didn’t.) In doing so it completely ignored the German reaction and
its impact on the growing strength of Germany’s right-wing opposition.
This issue
with Ukraine had blown up suddenly after a Polish state enterprise foolishly
chose to buy in cheap Ukrainian grain being shipped through Poland for third
world destinations. Once this grain flooded the markets in Poland, Polish farmers
had been sufficiently aggrieved to demand that these cheap grain shipments
stop, in order to protect Poland’s native agricultural produce. Initially, the
EU, which is responsible for all trade policies in Europe, put on a temporary
ban, but after a few weeks the ban was lifted. The Polish government proudly
followed its regular game of “patriotically” defying EU rulings and continued
the ban along with Hungary and Slovakia. When Ukraine complained and threatened
to appeal to the World Trade Organization, Poland retaliated with a torrent of
verbal accusations of Ukrainian ingratitude, a statement by Morawiecki that
Poland will stop providing weapons to Ukraine, and would now “re-arm itself”
and not Ukraine, and that benefits to families helping refugees should be
withdrawn. The fact that such language from a hitherto firm ally would please
Russia, upset Ukrainian morale and split the allied solidarity over Ukraine,
was immaterial. The government could on no account lose farmers’ support in the
coming election. Nothing else matters.
A further
scandal emerged recently within the Polish foreign ministry where hundreds, if
not thousands, of Polish visas had been sold illegally in precisely those third
world countries, whose immigrants, the Polish border guards were holding back,
often with great brutality, on the Belarusian border. Polish visas give
immediate access to the EU and also to Mexico, from where refugees pour across
the U.S. border. The U.S. is demanding an explanation and Germany is discussing
the possibility of imposing immigration controls on the Polish border, possibly
undermining the Schengen open border agreement. It adds to the Polish
government’s anti-German and anti-European persecution complex reflected in the
election campaign.
The Polish
government’s sophisticated internal electoral machine is very much in contrast
to the spasmodic infantile outbursts of its foreign policy relations. Yet, when
viewed dispassionately by foreign policy analysts they can see an agenda of
hostility to Germany and Europe, a sympathy for Trump, a right-wing illiberal
pro-family social programme, and a slowdown in support for Ukraine, which is
common both to Polish and Russian current policy. Certainly, western countries
are holding their breath over the coming election results, in the pious
undeclared hope that the disunited opposition parties can avoid fratricidal
conflicts and topple the United Right’s
majority in parliament and bring back sanity to Poland’s future foreign policy.
Wiktor
Moszczynski 01.10.2023