Jaroslaw Kaczynski may not be the obvious choice for Apple’s latest poster boy but his unorthodox use of the company’s iPad to by-pass parliamentary rules has made the frumpy former premier a Polish internet star.
Kaczynski was speaking during a debate over a no-confidence motion in the government of premier Donald Tusk – an idea that was easily defeated when MPs voted on Friday, gathering only 137 votes out of the 231 needed to unseat the government. He used his iPad to present a speech by Piotr Glinski, a little-known professor and Kaczynski’s nominee to lead a technocratic replacement to the Tusk administration.
Being neither an MP nor a member of the government, Glinski does not have permission to address parliament. Kaczynski shows how much rules like that are worth these days, from about 2.35 in this YouTube video (or click on the image above).
Kaczynski is not very popular and scares many centrist Poles with his radical views. As the virtual Glinski regaled MPs from his iPad, the flesh-and-blood Glinski glowered down at them from the visitors gallery above their heads.
While Kaczynski’s stunt provided plenty of fodder for amused tweets and YouTube moments, it does underline Poland’s fairly unique political problem – the country has no realistic alternative to premier Donald Tusk and his centrist government.
The right-wing opposition has been unable to mount much of an attack on Tusk for years. Part of its problem is its obsession with issues like the 2010 plane crash that killed Lech Kaczynski, Poland’s president and Jaroslaw’s twin brother. Many members of his party believe the plane did not crash but was blown up, probably with connivance of Tusk and Russia’s Vladimir Putin – a theory which has no factual support.
Meanwhile, the two left-wing opposition parties are riven by internecine warfare and any chance of their combining to create a single voting list by the 2014 European parliament elections has faded.
At a time when the economy is growing at its slowest pace in more than a decade while the country is debating how and when it should join the euro – the largest of the EU’s new member states could probably do with more than a virtual iPad debate.
This from Miroslaw Czech in Friday’s Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper:
Tusk won. He showed that he is able to keep the largest opposition party at a safe distance and that Kaczynski, in the way he presents himself, is not a dangerous rival for him. The danger for the premier and the government is the slowing economy, rising unemployment, the lack of ideas to create new jobs, problems with health care and the chasm between a modernising society and ever more conservative approach on the part of Civic Platform.
In other words, the only realistic threat Tusk faces comes not from the opposition but from the decomposition of his own party.
Related reading:
Poles fear recession will hit this time, FT
Polish infrastructure: goodbye privatisation, hello SPV, beyondbrics
Poland: Pawlak quits, markets shrug, beyondbrics
Source:
http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2013/03/08/polands-kaczynski-pulls-ipad-stunt-goes-viral-fails-to-unseat-government/