The weeklies look forward to 2009 as the year of important anniversaries for Poland - the 20th anniversary of the switch to democracy and market economy, after decades of communist rule, and the 70th anniversary of the oubreak of World War II.

Weekly press reviewed by Krystyna Kolosowska

Polityka says the year 2009 is the year of anniversaries. The 20th anniversary of Poland’s switch to democracy, initiated by the parliamentary elections on June 4, 1989, and the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II. Twenty years ago the Berlin Wall was dismantled, the velvet revolution broke out in Prague, the Ceausescu regime was deposed in Bucharest. Polityka goes on to say that Poles are unhappy, sometimes even to an exaggerated extent, that in Europe the destruction of the Berlin Wall symbolically overshadowed the peaceful revolution of Solidarity in Poland. There is no point in trying to outbid each other in the value of symbols, says the weekly. Both events are rightly regarded as crucial. It would be great if Poland managed to plan and conduct the anniversary celebrations in a manner uniting the national and the European dimension. It is good that chancellor Angela Merkel said she will take part in the events marking the anniversary of the June 1989 elections and the outbreak of World War II.  It is worth inviting other leaders, both present and historic, like Vaclav Havel. It would be wise to invite Pope Benedict XVI to deliver a message of peace to Europe and the world from Gdansk, where the first shots of the last war were fired and where Solidarity was born. That was Polityka.

Newsweek declares 2009  the Year of Poland. A series of anniversaries will re-direct our attention from current political developments to questions about who we are. What have we achieved, how will we use the next opportunity? Poland’s history abounds in missed opportunities and wasted hopes. It is enough to look at Polish anniversaries. The past 100 years bring mainly sad rather than good memories. Only the past two decades of building democracy and free market economy, after the fall of communism, have produced a positive balance. Even if it is below our expectations and aspirations, that time is a good springboard for another step. A half o Poles regard the twenty years gone by as the best in the past century.
Przekroj gives advice to Poles who joined the so-called commercial Open Pension Funds, in the hope of augmenting their future pensions. They have been asking with alarm – what has happened to our money? The answer is simple: it is gone but this was not a fraud. The crisis set in and the fact that the managers of the Open Pension Funds did poorly in confrontation with it is simply bad luck, which we have to accept. We cannot file a lawsuit against a fund, if it operates in compliance with the law. It is not worth, either, to make hasty moves. No matter whether one decides to pull out or not,  a typical pension from the open fund is not enough for those Poles who want to enjoy life as pensioners and do not plan to take an extra job then to supplement their pension. Forecasts, compiled even before the crisis began, show that pensions of Poles, either from the open fund or the state Social Insurance Office, will not exceed forty percent of pay received before retirement. The only solution in this situation is to invest money wisely, says Przekroj, presenting a list of possibilities, from T bonds to works of art and real estate. 

Wprost presents the generation of Poles born in 1989, after the collapse of communism. One of its symbols is tennis player Agnieszka Radwanska, born on March 6, 1989. Winner of four WTA tournaments, she is the first Pole to have earned one million dollars in tennis events. The Free Poland generation does not remember communism, with its empty shop shelves, large queues for toilet paper and accumulation of red tape. They don’t understand that there was a time when there was no freedom of speech and travel, as well as assembly. Today’s fifteen - twenty year olds speak foreign languages and often spend vacations abroad. They were brought up watching the same movies, listening to the same music and playing the same computer games as teenage Germans, Britons and the French. They feel no inferiority complex in contacts with the West. Young Poles win international IT contests one by one. In 2007, for example, representatives of Warsaw University defeated over 6000 teams from 1756 universities and won the International Collegiate Programming Contest. The ruling Civic Platform owes its overwhelming election victory to this generation of free Poles, who voted for it, seeing it as an open party with no complexes with respect to the West. In the next elections, young people will have 3.3 million votes. And they will be a demanding group, says Wprost. 

Retailers around the globe are trying to boost their profits with after-Christmas sales, and Poland is no exception, writes the Warsaw Business Journal, an English language weekly. With December 26 officially declared work-free, sales started in earnest on Saturday December 27, with prices slashed by between 30-70 percent. Although only a quarter of the public like special sales according to a recent GfK Polonia poll, malls are swarming with shoppers. Some retailers, such as Monnari, KappAhl and Royal Collection, launched special offers several weeks in advance, but Ikea, a leader in discounts over the recent years, is not holding an after-Christmas sale this year.