It is two years today since Prime Minister Donald Tusk formed the Civic Platform - Polish Peasant‘s Party coalition government. How have they done?
Speaker of Parliament and prominent Civic Platform politician Bronislaw Komorowski told Polskie Radio that Tusk’s government is, “the only one in the past two decades to have higher support now after two years in office than on election day.”
However, though polls do give Civic Platform a clear lead over the opposition Law and Justice, many are dissatisfied with the government’s performance.
In a telephone poll by the OBOP Institute, 68 percent of respondents said that the present coalition has failed to fulfil its election promises.
The performance of the prime minister himself is viewed positively 51 percent of the respondents, with 40 percent being critical of his work.
As far as individual ministers are concerned, the highest marks go to those in charge of foreign affairs, defence and culture, whereas the ministers for health and education are the bottom of the list.
Promises and performanceSo has the government lived up to election pledges?
PM Tusk with Pres. Kaczynski, November 2007 - PM Tusk promised withdrawal from Iraq, negotiations with Washington on the anti-missile defense system, strengthening the role of Poland in the EU and NATO, improved relations with Russia and Germany and the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty.
Two years later and the government has delivered on many of those promises. Poland’s armed forces withdrew from Iraq according to plan. In Europe, the Polish-Swedish Eastern Partnership program has been praised and the Lisbon Treaty was finally ratified by President Kaczynski last month.
Poland’s profile was raised in the EU when Jerzy Buzek was elected as President of the European Parliament.
Poland failed to get Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz to lead the European Council and Radoslaw Sikorski as head of NATO, however.
The anti-missile shield plan, agreed with the previous Bush administration was abandoned by Barack Obama this September.
Relations improved, initially, with Russia with an export ban of Polish meat quickly lifted after Tusk came to power two years ago. And though Vladimir Putin came to the 70 year anniversary of the beginning of WW II, disputes over the origins of the war rumbled on and no resolution has been achieved over the Katyn massacre.
Economy - Civic Platform promised the speedy adoption of the European single currency, a gradual reduction in taxes and budget deficit, a fall in unemployment and a quicker pace in highway construction.
But a booming economy two years ago was hit by the global finance crisis and Tusk’s promised “economic miracle” has not materialised. This forced the finance ministry to revise entry date for adoption of the Euro and the promise of a flat tax rate has been dropped. The budget deficit has continued to balloon. But Poland, nevertheless, will be the only EU nation to record GDP growth this year.
The privatisation of the Gdynia and Szczecin shipyards has been mired in controversy, however and road building remains sluggish.
Social policy - Pension reform and reform of the Agricultural Social Insurance Fund were promised in the 2007 election.
The government published the ambitious 400-page report “Poland 2030”. The report’s author, Michal Boni, described it as a strategy to make, "Poland a country in which you want to work, save, invest and have children."
However, pension reform is still under negotiation, and changes to the agricultural workers insurance system has been postponed, as it has been under several other governments.
In November, the Ministry of Labor and Finance announced changes to pension contributions, whereby obligatory contributions to private insurance funds will now be directed to the purchase of government bonds to increase the amount of capital gathered by future pensioners.
Health - Election pledges included transferring hospitals into commercial companies, a basket of guaranteed benefits, improved access to services.
President Kaczynski vetoed the flagship “commercialised” hospitals project an other reforms are still being worked on.
Culture - Tusk promised to "De-politicize the supervision and management of public media" and scrap the licence fee.
But two pieces of legislation regarding radical changes in the way public media will be funded in Poland have been vetoed by the head of state and a lack of agreement with the leftwing SLD has made overturning the vetoes in parliament impossible.
Justice - Separation of the role of Minister of Justice and Attorney-General, de-politicize public prosecutors and intelligence services and a continued fight against corruption were all Civic Platform election promises.
Tusk has only just managed to separate the Justice Ministry and Attourney-General and he dismissed the head of the anti-corruption bureau (CBA) Mariusz Kaminski following his accusations of government corruption in the gambling and shipbuilding sectors.
The government argues that Kaminski was not an impartial investigator of corruption but a tool of the Law and Justice opposition. Law and Justice accuse the government of business links with betting and shipbuilding industries and political manipulation of some security agencies.
(pg/mk)