WUI (Writing under the influence)

Well, it seems I was right. The first signs are not good. The PiS party platform (why didn't I know what that platform was exactly before the election?) indicates that, although socially conservative, it may want to introduce several big-government programs that reek of socialism.

Kamila Pajer has an article in today's Tech Central Station that is not very encouraging.

In an interview with Business Week Polska, [Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, the new Prime Minister] said he thinks that supermarkets should be forbidden to open on Sundays, that the state should establish maximum prices for drugs and books and that the state should finance higher education. As for the healthcare system, Marcinkiewicz admits, however, that patients should be free to choose their insurer - to decide whether they prefer to be insured by a public or private institution. Still, the PiS party program calls for a centrally managed public healthcare system with compulsory public insurance.

The PiS program is rather pro-social, meaning apart from public relief programs such as the one mentioned above, state guaranties of credits for houses and flats also many other socialist solutions: state control over the economy, slower privatization of public firms and state financed science and research. The party promises honesty and justice in public life. To fight rapidly spreading corruption, which is a direct result of the vast public administration and its power over the law, the party proposes to... enlarge the administration (the department of internal control). Clearly, the PiS believes the fact that in Poland clerks and politicians are corrupt; the fact that some 20 percent of people are unemployed and many live in poverty does not tell them the system is ineffective and devastating for the country, but rather that the system only needs some adjusting.

According to the PiS its program would lead to a "New Social Deal" to "Make all Poles profit from economic growth and not only the very limited number of the richest people". Yet, the party does not want to achieve this by making people more free but by controlling them more. The problem is also that the PiS program is just a collection of wishes and promises with the biggest promise of them all that PiS politicians are honest and can guarantee the money they take people is safe and will not be squandered.

The article makes a very important point about what may have happened last Sunday in Poland. It would seem on the surface that Poland made "a dramatic shift to the right." But a closer analysis suggests that after the elections "the statism supporters make up over 70 percent of the Polish parliament." So even though the coalition will consist of PiS and PO, the majority of Poles voted for the status quo and only shifted their preferences from ex-Communists (SLD) to other pro-social parties.

In 1989, when Communism fell in Poland, I said that it would take at least one generation for Poles to get rid of their dependency on the state. It seems I was right.

The Jews who were freed from Egyptian slavery wandered for 40 years in the desert before arriving in the Promised Land. Poles have been wandering the desert of Socialism for 15 years now.

Do we really have to wait another 15 years?