Both President Lech Kaczynski (pictured left) and Prime Minister Donald Tusk said before they went to the emergency EU summit in Brussels regarding the crisis in Georgia, this week, that they would present a "united face of Polish diplomacy." But, has the war in the Caucasus actually brought these two very different politicians any closer together?
By Peter Gentle
In an interview for the latest edition of the Polish version of Newsweek, PM Donald Tusk said that there is a need to finally specify the competences, responsibilities and influence of both the prime minister and the president. He said that a team of constitutional experts, chosen by the government and the President, should be called on to examine the matter.
Pawek Kowal, from the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party - the head of which is the President's brother, Jaroslaw - thinks that some politicians want to "use relations between the current president and prime minister for their own purposes," arguing that Monday's EU summit on the conflict in the Caucasus showed that no changes to the constitution are necessary. Both politicians seemed to work well together, he said.
But it's been a difficult 'cohabitation', to say the least, between Lech Kaczynski and Donald Tusk since the latter led his party, Civic Platform (PO), to victory in last autumn's general election.
Even who should appear at the EU summit on Monday was a cause of wrangling between the two politicians. After a hasty meeting last Friday, it was concluded that the President would lead the delegation with PM Tusk at his side, though initially the government said that it would confuse the message coming out of Warsaw to have both representing Poland.
The current state of the relationship - both were activists in the Solidarity movement in the 1980s - was clearly demonstrated by the tension between the two at the recent signing ceremony of the US anti-missile shield agreement in Warsaw, late last month. When Donald Tusk began his speech in English in front of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, President Kaczynski could be heard laughing in derision. He said afterwards that he always laughs at people who speak English badly.
The President's critics were quick to point out that the Polish head of state speaks no English at all.
Who rules foreign policy?
The main bone of contention has been: who has power over Poland's foreign policy? Presidents in Poland have veto power over government legislation, but little else since the reform of the constitution in 1997, designed to clip the wings of the head of state.
Lech Kaczynski has complained many times that Tusk's government fails to consult him on policy initiatives, which is unconstitutional, he argues; Tusk's government complains that Kaczynski seems determined to pursue a unilateral foreign policy all by himself.
Since the last election, it appears to many that two different foreign policy agendas have been acted out - one coming from the Presidential Chancellery, another from the Prime Minister's Office.
The prolonged negotiations over the US anti-missile shield; the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty - which the Euro-sceptic Kaczynski has been decidedly less keen on than the more Europhile Donald Tusk - are just two of the areas over which the politicians have clashed.
But, it has been Warsaw's position on Russia that has created the most friction.
As soon as Tusk was elected PM last year, his government announced that they would be trying to hastily conclude the dispute between Moscow and Warsaw over Russia's ban of Polish meat exports, and bring out of the deep freeze Polish-Russian relations, in general.
Under the previous Law and Justice government, the meat embargo enacted in December 2005 turned into more than just a trade dispute. In the mind of the then-prime minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the meat embargo was yet another tool used by Moscow to blackmail and regain some control over Poland, formerly a subject nation of the Soviet Union. Under a government led by Jaroslaw, with his brother in the Presidential Palace, Poland vowed to veto Brussels' attempt to get a new strategic agreement with Moscow for as long as the embargo lasted.
The new Tusk government ended the food dispute within days of taking office, however, amid criticism that he had "sold out" Poland in his keenness to appease Moscow.
Security from the bear
But Russia's beef with Polish meat was a side dish compared with two much greater issues: Poland's dependency on Russian oil and gas - a dependency even greater than western Europe's - and the question of Ukraine and Georgia's desire to join western structures such as NATO and the European Union.
President Kaczynski has been a high-profile, and some say aggressive, defender of Tbilisi and Lvov against what he sees as imperialist intentions coming from the Kremlin. He was dismayed by France and Germany's reluctance to give Georgia and Ukraine the green light to join the defence organisation at the summit in Bucharest last April. This was merely playing into Russia's hands, he thought.
The violence that broke out between Russia and Georgia confirmed the his fears. "Russia has shown its true [imperialistic] face," he told an enthusiastic crowd in Tbilisi the day Moscow announced a ceasefire. Kaczynski had organised the trip - accompanied by heads of state and prime ministers of the Baltic countries and Ukraine - without the knowledge of the government, said Foreign Minister, Radek Sikorski, at the time.
The PM has been equally clear that he thinks that Russia has been the aggressor. But Donald Tusk's supporters say that, by temperament, he is much more likely to want a consensus among EU states for any moves against Russia. Tusk likes to paint himself as more of a diplomat by nature than the confrontational Kaczynski.
So will the government be able to get legislation through parliament to enable them to limit the President's powers and end the tug-of-war over foreign and other policy, such as the battle over funding and control of public media, health-sector reform and many other issues?
The division of votes among political groups makes passing changes to the constitution currently impossible. Such a move requires a 2/3 majority - meaning the government needs 307 votes, while the ruling coalition currently has just 240.
A change in the constitution is unlikely. But could the experience of going together to Brussels have helped bring about an easing of the tension? One report this week suggests that anything is possible. In the plane on the way back from the summit in Belgium, PM Tusk complained he was tired and needed some sleep. To the rescue came President Kaczynski, who sympathetically offered the PM the use of the Presidential sleeping quarters on board the government plane. (photo: Aleksander Grąbczewski)