Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Poland's crazy coalition? Dead!?

As reported by Gustav at Warsaw Station, the coalition between the wacky rightwing euro skeptic nuts in the Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc party and the western leaning Platforma Obywatelska reformers has apparently fallen apart. While Gustav indicates that this means that the situation has obviously gone from bad to worse, I, being the eternal optimist, think this is actually a good thing; let PiS fall on its face all by itself. This way PO will have the credibility to actually win outright during the next election, after what will surely be a governmental debacle for the next few years to come.

I also think we'll have a lot of funny moments involving the new Vice-Speaker Andrzej Lepper. How better to lose any credibility with voters then to put a joker like Lepper in a position of, at least implied, power. I always hate to bring up the bogeyman of politics, but I have to remind everyone of how everybody's favorite despotic madman, Adolf Hitler, came to power. Kurt von Schleicher wanted to be Chancellor of Germany, he looked at the Nazi party as a fringe group that could help him get his coveted position. "Schleicher hoped to attain a majority in the Reichstag by forming a so-called Querfront, meaning 'cross-front,' whereby he would unify Germany's fractious special interests around a non-parliamentary, authoritarian but participatory regime."1 We all know what happened next, yada, yada, yada. Clearly I don't think Lepper will be the next Hitler (I am aware of my hypocrisy with using Hitler in the political sphere, as is well documented here, and can be seen watching this clip from the Daily Show with Jon Stewart), but I think every politician should know that even though he thinks that he's smarter then the wacko he wants to take advantage of, he really might be opening a pandora's box by giving the wacko legitimacy.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You make a good point. PiS will undoubtedly make asses of themselves - just as the SLD did.

This way PO will have the credibility to actually win outright during the next election, after what will surely be a governmental debacle for the next few years to come.

The question is whether Poland can afford to fritter away the next few years. And if it does, will it have drifted so deep into backwardness that PO will have less of a chance of winning than this year?

Which brings up another question - PO should have had this election in the bag from the beginning - this was their time. If PO can't pick the fruit when it's ripe, are we right to place our trust in them?

he really might be opening a pandora's box by giving the wacko legitimacy.

If that ain't scary, I dunno what is.