While the Polish Parliament has gone into summer recess for five weeks, Prime Minister Donald Tusk has told his cabinet ministers it’s not a good time for taking a holiday. At the end of last week, the ruling coalition suffered a major setback in the Parliament.
Michał Kubicki reports
A reform of the public media was one of the priorities of the Civic Platform party during its election campaign and was high on the agenda of the ruling coalition. In its view, Poland’s public television and public radio are political biased and favour the conservatives, who were at the helm of the government until the autumn of last year.
Under the legislation passed by the Parliament in the spring, members of the National Broadcasting Council, now appointed to six-year terms by both houses of parliament and the president, would be recalled before the end of their term. What is more important the Council’s powers in the crucial area of licencing would be transferred to the Office of Electronic Communication, subordinate for the government. Finally, the government wanted to abolish the licence fee, as a result of which public media’s dependence on direct state funding would increase.
The draft was criticized by Polish intellectuals and artists and the legislation was vetoed by the president who argued that it carried the risk of the further commercialization of public media. To over-ride a veto, a three-fifths majority is required but the ruling coalition was unable to muster it.
I asked Marcin Sobczyk, Warsaw Bureau chief of Interfax Central Europe if this is a major setback for the government: ‘It is the first demonstration that this government cannot rule using only its parliamentary majority. The government thought the post-communists would settle for silver, that they would be satisfied with some empty promises and for this reason it decided to go ahead with this bill of which it knew there would be problems coming from the president. The government simply found out it has no teeth and for sure this will make this government more frustrated.’
The president indeed comes from the opposing political camp but this particular piece of legislation was criticized very harshly also by many media experts and prominent politicians who can hardly be described as the opponents of the government: ‘The most important reason behind this legislation was to remove people associated with the president’s camp and with Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s cabinet, and replacing them with their own cronies; that motivation was not well hidden. The primary reason why this legislation was toppled was that in order to achieve those goals the government used the draft was not even good when it comes to legislative standards.’
After the defeat of the media legislation, prominent Civic Platform politicians say they will never conduct any talks with the post-communists. Will all this have a far-reaching impact on the political scene?
‘I wouldn’t say it will have a far-reaching consequence. I think after the holiday period the government and the leading politicians from Civic Platform have to sit down and do some serious thinking in which direction they go and who they can count on support, but I don’t think it will have significant ramifications for the rest of the year,’ said Matthew Day, a Warsaw-based British journalist.
The Prime Minister’s Civic Platform continues to be well ahead of the opposition Law and Justice in popularity ratings. It remains to be seen how its inability to push through Parliament important legislative initiatives will influence its position and image.