nasza_maggie
29.10.05, 01:45
oh how sour....
www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1602405,00.html
Poland's disenchanted killed off 'New Europe'
Poverty and regional inequality helped win votes for a socially conservative,
nationalist and Catholic president
Jonathan Steele
Friday October 28, 2005
The Guardian
"New Europe" is dead, and that's official. The verdict is not that of an
obscure thinktank. It comes from the central actor in the heartland of what
was once deemed to be a bold new part of the old continent, namely the people
of Poland.
In two recent elections, for parliament in September and for the presidency
on Sunday, they gave most support to a party which wants a strong state and
is highly suspicious of the free-market reforms of the last 15 years. It also
has major reservations about the European Union.
Its victory offers an important reality check against the hot air of
yesterday's Hampton Court talkathon and Tony Blair's latest calls to step up
the pace of liberal reform. The biggest of the EU's new members is as
attached to the old social model and as anxious about unregulated
globalisation as the "no" voters in the French and Dutch referendums.
The "new Europe" tag was invented by Donald Rumsfeld in the run-up to the
invasion of Iraq and initially covered foreign policy. Flushed with their
post-communist freedom, it was claimed, eastern and central Europeans
understood the value of Washington's international campaign to promote
democracy better than western Europeans did. The claim soon proved
inaccurate. The governments of "new Europe" supported the war, but majorities
in the polls did not. Poles and Czechs were no more enthusiastic about having
their troops in Iraq than people in Britain.
"New Europe" was then used to categorise attitudes to internal EU reform. It
is this simplification which Poland's voters have exposed. The victorious Law
and Justice party offers a traditional Catholic and nationalist platform,
which is more about protecting inherited values than promoting further reform.
On social issues president-elect Lech Kaczynski is a man of the right, a
critic of homosexuality and an advocate of the death penalty. After "nice"
Lech Walesa, the Solidarity founder who became Poland's first non-communist
president, we now have a "nasty" Lech, whose election was greeted in Brussels
with warnings that he would be watched for any violation of EU standards. His
twin brother, Jaroslaw, who led the Law and Justice party to victory in
parliamentary elections, has similar views. He did not triumph outright and
is still embroiled in fierce negotiations for a "grand coalition" which make
Angela Merkel's enforced marriage to the social democrats in next-door
Germany look simple.
The fact that Walesa and the two Kaczynskis are all former Solidarity
activists shows how far Polish politics has moved from the romanticism of
1989 - and how much Solidarity, even in its first years, was an amalgam of
not easily reconcilable interests: workers' rights, Catholic nationalism and
westernising liberalism, to name just a few.
Simple slogans about freedom tended to exaggerate the political dimension of
the Polish revolution. It also contained an important economic core. What
happened in this autumn's Polish elections is the return of economics. During
Poland's 16 years of neoliberal reforms, it did not matter much whether the
governments which brought them in were post-communists or anti-communists.
Economic strategies remained the same.
Now the electorate wants a rethink. At least those who voted do.
Disenchantment with politicians of all stripes is high, with barely 40%
taking part in September, the lowest turnout since 1989. The Civic Platform,
which had expected to win but came second in both polls, is a radical "flat
tax" party which advocates a 16% rate across the board. "Flat tax", which
unashamedly goes against the philosophy that governments have a duty to
promote income redistribution, was almost Angela Merkel's undoing as well.
Her proposal to appoint a flat-taxer as finance minister caused a huge slump
in her campaign.
Poland's elections exposed a divided country in which regional inequalities
have got worse. The geographical split is not unlike Ukraine's. Poland's poor
rural east and "rust belt", areas that benefited from postwar
industrialisation and are now struggling, voted for the Kaczynskis. Warsaw
and the more prosperous north and west chose the flat-taxers.
The results should not have been a surprise. The World Bank has just
published its latest survey of central Europe and the former Soviet Union.
The bank is hardly a leftwing propaganda outfit but its report, Growth,
Poverty, and Inequality, shows how far the region still has to go to make up
for the fall in living standards which came with the collapse of communism.
In 1988 only 4% of the region's people were poor - defined as having an
income of less than £1.25 a day. Now poverty affects 12%.
This is better than five years ago, when poverty affected 20% of the region's
people. Things have got better thanks largely to the rise in world oil
prices, which has pulled up the economy of Russia and some of its immediate
neighbours. Among the countries covered by the World Bank, the eight new EU
members are much better off. But the report shows that Poland, alone among
them, has seen a further increase in poverty over the last five years.
It also found a growth in inequality between regions, with prosperity largely
confined to capital cities while smaller towns and rural areas suffered. The
World Bank notes that subjective impressions also matter. It talks of
the "transition shock" caused by the sudden switch to market economics. "The
socialist legacy of high access to social services (eg, heating) and
infrastructure (eg, healthcare) which have since been eroded means that
people feel an acute sense of deprivation," it says.
The lesson for the future is that assessments of progress and popular
satisfaction must include socioeconomic factors as well as levels of
political freedom. EU governments should not get involved in narrow crusades.
Poland's neighbour, Belarus - which the US secretary of state, Condoleezza
Rice, has called "Europe's last dictatorship" - is sure to attract attention
next year when it holds presidential elections. The World Bank survey is
relevant here. While poverty went up in Poland, Belarus saw one of the
sharpest declines, enjoying "broad-based economic growth beneficial to
labour" in which the "benefits were broadly shared by the population".
Few doubt that the Belarus election will be less pluralistic than Poland's;
but social solidarity, a strong state, and a government which attempts to
lessen inequalities are what Polish voters have shown they want. The people
of Belarus probably have similar views.
j.steele@guardian.co.uk