PINK GLASSES AND ELECTORAL PROMISES
CZESŁAW RYSZKA
On 8 January this year, during a press conference, the prime minister Donald Tusk informed that our country in 2022 would be in a group of 20 richest countries of the world. Moreover, in relation to the length of motorways and expressways in 2016, and in 2017 the latest, we will overtake Great Britain and we will be the fifth country in Europe- after Germany, France, Spain and Italy. Certainly, the civilizational jump of Poland will be accompanied by welfare and safety of Polish families (in the opinion of the prime minister one and a half million Poles touched by poverty now will leave the sphere of poverty).
Certainly, we will achieve this welfare thanks to the money from the European Union: during 7 years we will get 500 milliard zlotys. The words of the prime minister were confirmed by the vice-prime minister Elżbieta Bieńkowska, responsible for receiving and spending this money. Well, the electoral year has begun, we have a traditional festival of great governmental promises, proclaimed with the belief that ‘dark mass’ will buy it.
It will not buy it, so I am asking in a polite way: if the EU manna from the sky will solve all our problems, so, why did not it happen earlier if during the past 10 years we got from the EU more than we expect at present? How can I believe that not it will be better if during the government of the Law and Justice party we already had a 7-per cent economic increase, and now only 1.3 per cent? Is it going to be better because we will manage to beg for more or borrow from other countries?
But if the EU money is to be even 500 milliard zlotys, then why is the government jumping onto the money of State Forests, out of which it wants to squeeze a milliard three hundred million zlotys during two years, which can lead the forestry economy to the collapse?! If we get so much EU money for our roads, so why is this excuse of the prime minister that the money gained from the State Forests will be spent on building and repairing local roads?!
The Prime Minister swears that he does not mean privatization of the State Forests, that he is ready to introduce a provision for the Constitution guaranteeing that everybody will be freely able to enter forests and use their charm like now. I believe him but I also see how desperately he is looking for money in order to patch gaps in the budget, how mindlessly he mentions these 500 milliard zlotys, not subtracting any fee which will be over 150 milliard zlotys at that time, and forgetting that we have our own contribution for every EU application, but because we do not have it, we lend money. As a wise host, the prime minister should know that in our country 200 thousand clerks ‘are feeding’ themselves with the EU money, that it will be necessary to subtract money from this amount for expenditures connected with the Climate Packet, Fiscal Packet, the Common European Patent or the so-called Bank Union (costs will increase by 200 milliard zlotys), and if to sum up this all, it will turn out that Poland subsidizes the EU, instead of taking advantage of it.
Therefore I advise the prime minister not to push the State Forests into debts because later they will undergo the same mechanism, like in the case of many state enterprises or hospitals – privatization. He should not forget that the nation has advantages of milliards from the ownership of forests. A private owner will allow us to enter a forest, because the constitution will guarantee it, but will he guarantee the future of forests? Probably he will behave like the previous merchants of thousand Polish privatized enterprises, the so-called foreign investors , after which only empty halls, closed port cranes, inactive chimneys remained…
I do not believe in any promises of the prime minister, neither the ones concerning the ‘rain’ of the EU money, nor the ones about maintaining the State Forests in the hands of the State Treasury. I do not believe, as he explains: ‘It is worth using these means cumulated for years, also in order to guarantee the State Forests an absolutely safe existence for dozens of years ahead, by statute’. Can anyone understand it? We take saved money away from the State Forests, in order to guarantee them a safe future! It sounds like the recently passed act of the Civil Platform and the Polish Peasant Party about Open Pension Funds: we take a bigger part of a fee saved in the Open Pension Funds to the state budget, in order to guarantee Poles a higher pension in the future. Does anybody know a case that somebody is deprived of something and another victim gains on it?
This government is extremely ineffective, it has not got any long-term strategy of the country development which is proved by uncontrolled, nearly free sale of concession for extracting shale gas. That is not all, the government is corrupted – which is proved by tender scandals, including the biggest scandal called info-scandal of the Third Polish Republic (according to the European Commission, about 25 per cent of big tenders in Poland might be touched by corruption). Moreover, this government leads us into debts over the proverbial ears (nearly 950 milliard zlotys in the end of the year 2013). This government is able to waste every gained amount of money, which is proved by building roads and motorways: we have spent over 100 milliard zlotys on them, most companies and devices were from abroad, and over a half of Polish companies, which were building them as subcontractors, are either collapsing or are being liquidated.
Prime Minister, you should take off pink glasses. Your other electoral promises are worthless and are not worthy even ‘a pound of wisps’.
(AA)
"Niedziela" 3/2014