Arbitrally selected erstwhile on 1 January means the start of a fresh calendar year. It encourages, on the 1 hand, to balance the erstwhile year in different areas of individual and collective life, and on the another hand, to plan events and processes in the coordinates of the following year.
The past year will surely be remembered as the "year of America's weakness" due to resignation Joe Bidena in the election campaign, which undoubtedly delayed the start of his successor Kamali Harris and weakened her chances of competing with a returning president Donald Trump. He won a phenomenal victory, and it will start in 2025 under his name. This presidency involves various expectations and even greater uncertainties and risks.
Also in Poland, this year will announce due to presidential elections the chances of effective improvement of the state or the hazard of further paralysis of political institutions and government degrengolade. The future of the fresh year is so a hope for many of us, but many observers fear and fear. It turns out that different time perspectives in voters find their political preferences and influence the modeling of the future by the prism of created authorities.
In Poland we are dealing with an offer of 2 crucial “chronosophy” in the presidential elections, that is, to usage time for knowing on the 1 hand “who are we?” and “where do we come from?” and on the another hand “who do we want to be?” and “where are we going?” 1 is retrospective and reconstructive, the another is prospective and projectional. These communicative perspectives feature 2 most crucial candidates – Karol Nawrocki and Rafał Trzaskowskione of which will most likely become president of Poland for the next 5 years. another perspectives, like candidates, do not substance much. In fact, they are usually the mutations mentioned.
The evening campaigning takes the participants of public life distant from real time. It draws them into imagined time, concerning explanation of the past and/or modeling the future. Thanks to various sociotechnical procedures, candidates to the highest office feed listeners and viewers with mirage and deceptive hopes. Persistent transmissions of demagogic and dismal content effectively disturb the awareness of the place and time. The magic and mammothing of people with electoral promises is driving them out of their sense of reality. The perception based on rationality is distorted. It is replaced by a wishful, pictorial perception, most frequently mythologicalized. There is polarization of views and beliefs. People are given a negative attitude toward different reasoning people due to the fact that they restrict their imagination of reality to one, only the right perspective.
Contrary to appearances, the most hard analytical and communicative challenge is to focus on the present. Today, politicians, even little frequently husbands or states, who could read the signs of the hic et nunc (here and now) and draw the right conclusions about the future. minute problems replace visions and strategies. This applies to both interior and global policies.
Today, it is not adequate to know in the formal form of the state's body institutions. Although this frequently exceeds the cognitive capacity of candidates. After all, the processes of functioning democracy are not limited to compliance by all its addressees. Eventually, authoritarian systems can besides be lawmakers. Democratic political culture and language are far more crucial than organization and normative structures Max Weber – the ethics of leadership class responsibility. It commands that pragmatism and praxeology be preferred over ideological uncompromisingness (the ethics of convictions).
It is not a secret that, in modern systemic conditions, the most crucial actors in politics are interest groups and pressures, and clienty between them and power does not let fair redistribution of goods or effective participation of citizens in real decision-making processes. We are besides dealing with many pathologies that grow into the nature of the political strategy and cannot be eliminated as a consequence of successive elections and changes in government teams. These include the politicisation of peculiar services and their instrumentalisation for the ruling party. Another example is the petrification of the organization strategy through statutory solutions, blocking the actual anticipation of creating fresh political forces and the real circulation of elites.
The usage of ruling elites is as old as the world. For more than 3 decades, light and degenerate political systems have persisted in Poland, which are the origin of inability to govern and all catastrophic consequences in the form of greed and corruption of politicians, their demoralization and hypocrisy, voluntarism and legal relativism. The presidential candidates should so be expected to have circumstantial prescriptions for the renewal of political elites, to remove the channels for recruiting politicians from among competent and modern-thinking people, uncompromising in defence of national interest alternatively than cosmopolitan and servile towards abroad leaders.
It would be good to exposure the expert and so advisory staff of the main candidates as future decision-makers. And it's not about the political image or body speech. Nor about celebrities, who give a candidate peculiar worship. It is about what analytical and applicable abilities these chosen ones can demonstrate, what their intellectual condition and possible for creativity are. For now, there is no feeling of any freshness of ideas for Poland, of alternate visions of development, methods of national reconciliation, prescriptions for the normalization of neighbourly relations, or of entering into a discussion about a fresh division of forces in global relations and the re-evaluation of a catastrophic arms race. Truisms and clichés will not replace specifics, nor will they make Poland a power.
Compared to intrapolitical issues, knowing modern global processes is even more difficult. Blind attachment to the conventional values of the Westphalian order, shaped for respective centuries, beginning with the end of the 30 Years' War in 1648, results in politicians practically uneducated in this area “a stray in the fog”. Only Rafał Trzaskowski fulfils the condition confirmed by his doctoral certificate of competence in the field of global relations, but he besides frequently remains in the “land of illusion”.
None of the candidates can mention to erosion and relativisation of sovereignty as an attribute of states in the modern global system. reasoning that Poland is simply a sovereign state with the United States or with Germany is simply a hoax and self-deception. A rational and realistic analysis of the global order clearly indicates that it is hierarchical and even hegemonic in which the power of the largest states determines the form of the systems of forces and their stability. Poland needs to be able to enter into these constellations, given all nonsubjective and subjective conditions, not to plant itself on pretentiousism. This makes us laughter and reminds us of the worst times in past erstwhile the hard-core politicians of the Second Republic fed people with a false power for which it came to pay the highest price.
Poland, due to the limited competence of the “average” state, is doomed to partnership and loyalty-based agreements in regional integration groups. However, it seems to have adequate interior power not to give in uncritically to all initiatives and plans from the ruling bodies of the Atlantic or Western European community. An example is the fatal depriving Poland of energy safety (decarbonisation), and by dogmatically understood environmentalism, condemning people to energy poverty. Energy prices in Poland are already beating European and planet records. What prescription do presidential candidates gotta defend Polish interests in this regard?
At present, 1 of the fundamental principles to defend the sovereignty of the State – the prohibition of interference in interior affairs – is simply a laughing stock, especially for the weakest countries. Events related to electoral processes in Moldova, Romania and Georgia (not to be forgotten about Ukraine in 2014) show that if the right candidate does not win from the position of Western groups, these are grounds for external interference, most frequently in the direction of re-election of "right" candidates. There are quite a few hypocrisy in this proceeding, but besides contempt for societies and electoral institutions. Can candidates for president of Poland distance themselves from specified apparent anomalies and the application of double standards? Is Russia the only 1 who sees sources of unwanted interference in the interior affairs of the russian states?
The positions of governments in the face of many interior and global problems are unfortunately highly ideological. And these are not clear reasons for their choices and policies, but the consequence of inherited contamination and attitudes, conditioned by dependence, phobias and misperception. The worst phenomenon is mixing spiritual ideology into politics.
When 1 of the candidates constantly emphasizes his Christian and Catholic attachment to values, his hypocrisy and deception are more detrimental to these values than he gains the support of those who profess them. He plays spiritual symbolism (the alleged conflict for crosses) exposes the weaknesses of all participants in the ideological dispute. It besides encourages reflection that Poles learn nothing erstwhile it comes to the request to reject emotions for common sense and rationality. religion in the favour and assistance of supernatural forces in the election run takes candidates back to ancient times, and casts a shadow of backwardness and obscurantism on voters.
The paradox of the “west” of Poland is to push it towards a secularised and secularized world. After all, the binder of national communities in this yearning West is simply a secular ethos, not a confesive one, based on civilian and world-neutral ties, embedded on a common spiritual culture, customs and lifestyle, as well as rich forms of participation in public life. They are the ones that encourage experiencing the present and building improvement prospects, creating openness to change, tolerance to change and respect for pluralism. religion is not a public or national matter, but a private, personal, individual matter.
Candidates for the highest office in the state cannot abstrate from the nature of modern capitalism, which in the Hegemonic communicative of the West is considered to be the only possible means of effective management on Earth. Taking care rhetorically of the well-being of citizens, they ask for a decent price for a proverbial butter cube, while at the same time advocating for the largest multi-billion-dollar reinforcements in Poland and Europe. For them there is no causal link between war and inflation, between energy prices and sending it free to the fighting Ukraine. If they do not see the cost-intensive and very risky overturning of the armed situation, as well as the war consequences of inflation, they do not deserve serious treatment by voters. All the anguish associated with the exploitation of employees, the precarriage, the increasing material dissection of society, the concentration of wealth in the hand of the oligarchy, stay beyond the sight of the run heroes. It would be appropriate to shout out to their faces that they are all on the side of capitalist plutacracy, not broad masses, obtuse with consumerist propaganda of pseudo-dorobot.
The political forces that bring out their candidates agree on the precedence of the Polish policy of security. However, this word is as polysemantic (much) as the weather. Everyone talks about it all day, but very fewer can explain the nature of the atmospheric phenomena around us. safety is utilized not only in different meanings by different people, or in different meanings by the same people, but besides in different meanings by the same individual at the same time.
“Safety system” allows you to operate freely with facts and demands. The proposal of a “peace by war” is the most tragic invention. However, it leads to the implementation of a long-planned American strategy to make armed “to the teeth” with the US Poland, like Israel in the mediate East, an effective bolt between Russia and Germany. Americans have no alternate strategy to balance the possible alliance of these 2 powers. "Maintenance of a strong wedge struck between Germany and Russia is 1 of America's vital interests" (George Friedman, "Next decade. Where we were and where we are going”, Kraków 2012, p.171).
In this context, voters should openly ask candidates how far they identify with this American strategy, which condemns Poland to eternal conflict with its largest neighbours. Does Poland have anything to say in this case, or is it just a tool in the hands of a hegemonic American strategy? If safety is so crucial for each candidate, it is worth knowing where this incredible tabooing of American warrant prices comes from.
When people have no cognition from authoritative sources, they scope for various rumors, rumors, myths, and confabulations. Why, then, in specified a mysterious suspension, remains the question of compensation for alleged judaic property without inheritance? Citizens have the right to know at what phase the Polish-American arrangements remain, after all, Act 447, adopted by the U.S. legislature on December 12, 2017 and signed by Donald Trump (the first), is simply a dangerous basis for American-Jewish claims. It would so be interesting to hear from the candidates their position on matters of negotiation with the American side. After all, regulating these issues and making them public has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. It is only an expression of concern for the protection of the Polish state of possession (Leszek A. Sosnowski, "447. Polish plunder plan – from the Terezinski Declaration to Act 447", Warsaw 2020).
Another highly vital and delicate subject is the function of Poland in restoring peace in Ukraine. Should it permanently negate Russia's rations and yield on all issues of Ukraine, or should the desired peace as a safety coalition be developed as shortly as possible at diplomatic level, with specified guarantees of the powers as never to reoccupe a tragedy? For now we are dealing with a bizarre submission to the Polish war strategy of Kiev, as if Polish decision-makers had nothing to say about it. Declarations by the Polish Prime Minister during his visit to Lviv in December 2024 confirm only all erstwhile sad accounts, that the ongoing war did not teach Polish politicians nor rationalize their own interests nor their determination to defend their own honor.
In particular, they endanger to scope a rotten compromise on commemoration of victims of the Volyn crime. A unusual thought of separating the exhumation from commemoration of the victims could only be born in the sick minds of bander loyalists. The Poles, regardless of their worldviews and perfect orientations, collectively anticipate presidential candidates to stand firm against manipulation of history. The memory of the disgraceful crimes of the Ukrainians from the OUN-UPA mark on the altar of cynical games of politicians from above Dniepr and nothing unwarranted towards them from the political camp of Poland (see Wiktor Poliszczuk, “Dignify UPA!”, Warsaw 2013).
Poland, regardless of its political and political formation, has a rich tradition of diplomatic initiative to defend the collective interests of countries, culture of cooperation and human solidarity. There is no reason to be ashamed of achievements in this respect from the times of all political formations, including the period of the People's Poland. possibly 1 of the candidates for president of the Republic will yet admit that Poland has its historical continuity and that it did not begin on 4 June 1989 with the contract elections to the Sejm?
Poles are genetically programmed to experience time. knowing Polish past is impossible without dividing it into stages and cycles of state independency and failure of independence. It is useful in explaining modern problems associated with injuries to neighbors and judging them for all historical harm.
Candidates must be aware that no state, much little power, is "holy" in the performance of their interests. Therefore, it is so crucial to be discreet and discreet in issuing categorical assessments and judgments of others. The trick is to return to a compromise order based on common concessions between the parties and forgotten in the last 3 decades specified instruments as moderation, facilitation, autonomy, concilation, inquisition or arbitration. No entity in global relations can attribute a decisive or imposing a solution to the differences and contradictions that divide them.
Perhaps candidates for the highest office in the state cannot anticipate besides much. But 1 thing they should all have in mind. They are individual actors, but represent certain political formations, even erstwhile they call themselves civilian and independent candidates. This is another show of paradoxical reasoning and deceiving ourselves. However, they should be aware of the request to break the limitations of individual perception of time. The request is to think in terms of collective time. The ambition to leave a lasting trace in social memory is important. Their efforts and tedious translations of problems specified as they perceive them should have an educational, agitation and mobilization dimension. If these chances are wasted, past will shortly forget them. Does anyone remember any signs of ideological and substantive disputes that went on years ago? Egocentism and megalomania, as well as the deficiency of candidates will rapidly fade distant in collective oblivion.
Prof. Stanisław Bielen
Think Poland, No. 1-2 (5-12.01.2025)
