Although the race for the seat of the president of Poland has not officially begun yet, its most crucial participants are already known. On Sunday 24 November, following the announcement by KO of the nomination of Rafał Trzaskowski, the “citizen” candidate for president Karol Nawrocki was officially presented.
Citizen, in large quotes, due to the fact that although Karol Nawrocki declares unpartisan, he was selected by the Law and Justice, and even personally by Jarosław Kaczyński. The chief of his staff, on the another hand, was PiS politician Paweł Chiefernaker. Before the announcement of the party-free nomination, Nawrocka was not widely known to Poles. According to a poll conducted by the Pollster investigation Institute, as many as 62% of possible voters did not know the candidate supported by the PiS. It is hard to be surprised, since even Andrzej Duda had problem joining the name of his possible successor. During the press conference, he clearly "cut himself down" and Nawrocki's name only remembered after taking a look at the card. Although Duda yet called him a “interesting candidate”, who is “close to his heart” on historical and state issues, the bad impression remained. Whether it was in fact a forgetfulness or an intentional affront, it will most likely stay the secret of the incumbent president.
Practically immediately after the announcement of Nawrocki's candidacy, controversy arose about this decision. Jarosław Kaczyński was to receive an interior report, describing suspicious contacts of the president of the Institute of National Memory. According to press reports, the paper was most likely prepared by alleged investigative journalists commissioned by individual from the PiS who wanted to harm Nawrocki's campaign. The survey describes his contacts with people who are credited with criminal activities and links with neo-Nazi circles.
More compromising for Nawrocki than the burden resulting from his lush youth, however, there is activity in the position of president of the Institute of National Memory. He became celebrated as a destroyer of monuments symbolizing the triumph over Nazi Germany. He destroyed not only the monuments commemorating the military activity of russian soldiers but besides the posts devoted to Polish weapons. 1 of them was a monument to the “sleeping knights” in Nowogard. At the time, among another things, prominent intellectuals, people of culture and social activists stood up in our weekly defence of this monument.
Prof. W. Julian Korab-Karpowicz then wrote: “In many articles attacking the monument for ideological reasons and defining it as “Soviet” or “communist” there is no reflection that it is simply a beautiful work of art. Its construction was completed in 1972 with social contributions. He was to commemorate the actions of those who died by liberating the Western Pomerania. The monument has poetic pronunciation – it resembles sleeping knights. It depicts 4 characters: 2 erstwhile warriors and a soldier in a hornet and a helmet. There is large peace and strength in them. They have a flag with a hub eagle flying over them. So it is highly patriotic and educational. Although in a soldier in a helmet you can find a typical of the Red Army, and in a hornet of a LWP soldier. Thus, there is besides the thought of a brotherhood of arms, a common struggle, triumph and liberation, which is expressed by the inscription on the frontoon: “Under Grunwald and in Berlin and forever together”.
This argument, of course, does not appeal to IPN hatchers. Nawrocki is arrogant to break the monuments of triumph over Nazism, he considers it his success. On the occasion of the demolition of another monument, in Głubczyce, he said: “This monument is simply a symbol of a strategy that built itself a wicked house, or russian Union, after 1917, and which is inactive floating its spirit in the present Russian Federation. (...) This monument is simply a symbol of a strategy that already in its theoretical bases in the second half of the 19th century called for a planet revolution and extermination, the liquidation of circumstantial social groups. It is simply a symbol of a strategy that hand-in-hand with Adolf Hitler started planet War II, the most tragic conflict in planet history. The symbol of the system, which he vassalized after 1945, colonized half of Europe – including our country, Poland – and which continued to execution Polish heroes in Ubek execution rooms, in forests, in the streets. This monument is simply a monument to a lie, a historical monument. due to the fact that Poland in 1945, neither here in Głubczyce nor in the pre-war territories of the Second Poland the Soviets did not bring freedom" – Nawrocki was excited.
It is no wonder that the candidacy of the president of the IPN was enthusiastically accepted by persons seconded to the functions of nationalists. After all, the historical policy cultivated by the IPN under Nawrocki's leadership is nothing but an exemplification of the stupid patriotism promoted by them for years. Romantic, emotion-based, rejecting cold calculation. An highly well-tuned “Moscal disease”, effectively affecting the clarity of reality. So a perfect antithesis of intelligent patriotism, characteristic of our ideological camp.
From the point of view of purely electoral calculation, the placing of PiS on Nawrocki is surprising. due to the fact that although due to its radicalism it will be able to easy scope for the national-radical part of the Confederate voters, the same trait discourages it effectively many more centre electorate. Young and eternal youths in T-shirts with the inscription “death to the enemies of the Homeland” in the first circular can besides support Sławomir Mentzen, who has clearly radicalized his programme under election. Also, the fresh flavors of his lush youth, with the pleasance of being exploited by political antagonists, will not aid Nawrock.
Is Nawrocki so a individual mistake of an aging PiS president? Or is Kaczyński's decision part of his big, makiavelic plan? We'll see about that in a fewer months, at the end of the election campaign. The finale in which Nawrocki's presence is not yet a certainty. For so far, he is only a candidate...
Przemysław Piasta
photo of wikipedia
Think Poland, No. 51-52 (15-29.12.2024)
