The former Democratic Left (SLD) Prime Minister Leszek Miller has called the ruling Civic Platform’s (PO) plans to slash pensions claimed by former Communist secret militia (SB) officers “a triumph of folly over decency”.
“The attempt to take away the military pensions from General Wojciech Jaruzelski and his former subordinates is a triumph of folly over decency. Political whippersnappers take revenge on the Polish exile to Siberia and frontline soldier [during WWII] who first saved our country from the Warsaw Pact’s military invasion [by introducing martial law in 1981] and then brought about the roundtable talks [in 1989] and political transformation at an unprecedented scale in Poland,” Leszek Miller writes on his blog on Onet.pl Internet portal.
In the former PM’s view, there are no such “mythical privileges” that could make amends to the General for his great contributions to contemporary Poland and the Civic Platform “have put themselves into the Law and Justice’s (PiS) shoes” trying to vengefully slash the former SB officers’ retirement pensions.
Miller has also recalled the fact that even the former Solidarity leader Lech Walesa vetoed a similar bill in 1992 when he was President.
The Dziennik daily wrote on Tuesday that the Polish Lower House would soon debate a draft bill prepared by the Civic Platform to lower the pensions claimed by some 35,000 former officers of the Communist militia still living in Poland. The newspaper informed that the average monthly pension claimed by the retired SB generals was 7,300 zlotys (2,300 euros) a month and would be reduced to 2,500 zlotys under the new law. (mj)