Ministerstwo Infrastruktury

[Gość: Giles]

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21st Oct 2002


“Go back? Not for many years”

This week Wojciech Janczyk, now the troubleshooting CEO at Elektrim,
contributes a unique insight on life in the government machine after his
brief experience as a minister.


I had never planned to join the government, although I had been working with
the government for the roughly last 10 years on privatisation and policy
creation, with BMF, an advisory firm I created in 1991. It was pure accident,
because one of the companies I helped privatised was Tarpan, a Poznañ car
manufacturer. Marek Pol was the finance director of Tarpan.
Having forged a business relationship, when he became Minister of
Infrastructure he asked me to look for a deputy minister who would work on
various financial issues within the government. But I spent about a month
looking for someone and couldn’t find anybody.
After about a month of trying I said, “Look I totally failed.” Then Pol
said, “Well if you failed you have to join yourself.” So, he “persuaded” me
into this position. When I decided to take the position as undersecretary of
state in the Ministry of Infrastructure I was considered to be a very
different animal to the rest of the government, surprising because I thought
the businessman-to-politician transition was a more common process as it is
in other countries.

I was responsible for negotiations with the EU on transport policy,
supervising European community aid money, such as PHARE. And then I was
supposed to do anything else that had to do with economy or financing or
infrastructure. For a businessman in government, you have to amend your
psychological attitude because what you are used in your normal life as a
president of a company for 10 years suddenly is not proper. It’s not proper
to have a credit card. My American Express card was causing a significant
uproar. Why was I paying with a credit card? When I am a minister, I should
be poor. I tried to keep my profile low, but there were one or two things
that were problematic. The fact that I like to play golf from time to time
was keenly hidden from my CV so not to cause offence.
Those things one has to be worried about. Average pay of a civil servant
before the director level is z³. 2,000 and director is maybe z³. 4,000. That
is not a lot of money, not bad for Poland, but overall nothing to compare to
doing business in Warsaw. So you have to be very sensitive in how you behave,
so not to give offence.
There is a hierarchy of responsibilities. You have people at various levels
who are resistant to change. And you can’t get rid of them easily because
civil servants have a certain job security. If you want to hire someone new
it’s a very big problem because there’s an official scheme. If you want to
hire someone as a director in the department he or she has to have three
years civil service experience. Where do I find a good director of a
department for financial engineering with three years experience?
Effectively, it’s impossible.

We found that eight times out of ten, we just could not create proper teams.
So we followed outside advisers. But advisers are a very fishy business. The
parliamentary commission watches after them and asks every couple of months
for full reports on what extra services you are hiring from outside. I had
two or three people who are working as advisers for me paid by the ministry
because I just couldn’t hire them as civil servants in time.
The funny thing was that when I built a team of people working with me,
people like Marek Belka were asking me how I did it. The policies that are
supposed to safeguard undue political influence, which are definitely a good
thing, also prevent change within the administration, and this change needs
to happen rapidly.
Then there’s the issue of suspicion.
Whenever anyone has to do anything with money and decisions, there is
absolute suspicion from various corners that you are not doing for the best
of the country or government, but because you have a side deal with this or
that investor. That polarised any activity. It is much easier not to make any
decision than make a decision moving forward.

The people who can survive longest in government are those (maybe not at the
very top) who want to be in civil service are those who avoid making
decisions because it’s safer this way. It was extremely difficult for me and
I even stopped trying.
I think many people tacitly questioned why I became a politician, when I had
ten times more money as a businessman. What type of big deal what I trying to
cook if I dropped that for a 10th of my price? Probably there was billions
that I was trying to steal. That was sort of the concept, not spoken, but
people there felt it, and people told me that stories are about that: What is
Janczyk trying to do? What is this big, big thing he’s trying to muster?
At many levels people treat their jobs as sinecures. There is a fanatic
director that actually works from 7 a.m. to midnight. But then you see this
guy next door who comes in at 9 a.m. and is gone at 4 p.m. He’s never
switched the computer on. And they are earning exactly the same money.
The biggest benefit of us joining the EU is what is happening to Polish law
once we’ve had all the anguish of getting this legislation through. This is
one of the best things to happen because Polish law is often written on a
knee. It was relatively crazy.
The European Commission is in effect saying, “You better act differently or
you are going to lose money or your are going to be penalised.” If you talk
to Prime Minister Leszek Miller, he will say we need to change. Yes of
course, then get it done. But then when it comes to action, do we pay people
more money? Do we hire more people? No.
The only saving grace is this wonderful EU that was saying, for instance,
Poland is going to lose another €500 million if you don’t get 100 more people
here and 50 more there. Then things get done because it is not the government
that is saying it. It’s those other guys who are telling us, so we will
comply.
After working as a politician, and then resigning, it is a wonder how a
businessman can survive. Go back. Not for many years.