Investigating party popularity, returning medals, filing annual tax returns, and knowing your eggs and sins: some of the stories in today’s dailies.
Press reviewed by Elzbieta Krajewska
Starting with RZECZPOSPOLITA, which features the results of a new popularity poll by the GFK Polonia, according to which only three political parties in Poland would pass the election threshold to Parliament. Left standing are the ruling Citizens Platform, with support rising to 59 percent – 11 points more than in a survey carried out in March. They are followed by opposition Law and Justice, whose popularity plummeted by four points to 24 percent, and the Social Democratic Left, who collected four points to make nine. According to the poll, junior ruling coalition member Peasants Party slipped below the threshold to three percent. Also GAZETA WYBORCZA publishes the results of its first poll in the run-up to the European Parliament elections in June, with only slightly different conclusions and a better forecast for the Peasants Party at six percent. However, the paper adds that the key issue in the European elections will be turnout, as interest is even lower than five years ago when turnout reached a modest 21 percent.
Still with GAZETA WYBORCZA one of whose leading journalists has decided to give back the state distinction awarded in 2006 for her part in the strikes of 1980. Responding to the president’s generosity with medals for the staff of the Institute of Public Remebrance, recently embroiled in scandal over publications on Solidarity icon Lech Wałęsa, journalist Ewa Milewicz writes: “millions of people took part in the strikes but without Lech Wałęsa there would be no 1989, no you, Mr. President, or my paper. (…) If Lech Wałęsa and those who support him are ‘base’, and the IPN ‘courageous’, please accept back my medal. With words of disappointment, Ewa Milewicz”.
The daily DZIENNIK frontpages the news that Poles are now able to file their annual tax returns via the internet. “It’s child’s play!” enthuses the paper, checking out the internet site on the very day that the relevant law comes into force. Drawbacks? Well, so far only one type of tax return can be sent in via the interactive government site, and “you have to be very careful – the taxman won’t forgive mistakes and corrections must be filed personally” warns DZIENNIK.
In Easter week the same daily tackles the serious matter of eggs, writing that the Trade Inspection has come up with some worrying evidence of egg fraud: they found that half of the eggs in shops are wrongly labeled, and many of those we buy as “free range” are indeed the product of chicken farms! While all the eggs comply with food law regulations – and obviously while mass-produced eggs are cheaper, there’s no comparing the taste, writes DZIENNIK, advising to buy your eggs only from trustworthy suppliers!
Lastly, over to tabloid FAKT for another Easter-related issue: the annual confession of sins, which every practising Roman Catholic should make at Easter time. The paper writes that 80% of Poles go to confession at Easter and that priests are hearing more and more modern sins such as: taking or trafficking drugs, causing poverty, indecent riches, polluting the environment – as well as all the old ones of which the one we have most problems with is… sloth.