Sunday, March 11, 2007

Cronies on Boards

"It has to be clearly said that 16 months after PiS's victory, no activist or supporter of our party, who bled himself during our election campaign, suffers from hunger and want."

This stark quote was made by one of the leaders of the Kaczynski brothers' PiS party, as quoted by Gazeta Wyborcza.

Of course all politicians have to reward their supporters and the spoils system has been around for ages. But this just shows what the Kaczynski brothers are really doing out there. It's not about getting the communists out and certainly not about kicking out political hacks from state-controlled companies to put in their own experts. It's the exact opposite. It's about funneling state money to your supporters, getting them jobs at any cost.

At least the opposition Platforma Obywatelska is putting together a list of all PiS members who are sitting on boards of state-controlled companies. This is going to be interesting. Probably won't help much in the immediate term, but at least it will shine some light at this corrupt spoils system of Duck Republic, Inc. For a party that is so anti-communist, it's amazing how well it adopts the tactics of its enemies.

There is one definite way of fixing this to prevent the millions of zloty that are flowing out of inefficient and corrupt state enterprise: privatize now!

Maybe the next government will do that, because PiS is doing the exact opposite. Not only have the Kaczynski bros stalled privatization, they are even considering buying back stakes of state-controlled enterprises from private owners. Take a look at LOT.

2 comments:

Polcham said...

A link is generally made to your posts at the Polish News Roundup" The more you post the more we link to you. And even though you find reason to criticize us, we will still link to you.

Just keep on posting.

Chris Borowski said...

Thank you. I am an avid reader of the Roundup, which is one of the best sources for English-language news on Poland. Keep up the good job. Even if we disagree sometimes ;)