Jacek Kurski

Jacek Kurski (2016)

Jacek Olgierd Kurski (born February 22, 1966 in Danzig ) is a Polish politician. From 2005 to 2009 he was a member of the Sejm and from 2009 a member of the European Parliament . Since August 2020 he has been the director of the public broadcaster Telewizja Polska (TVP) . He already held this office from January 2016 to March 2020. He is a co-founder of the right-wing party Solidarna Polska .

Life

He is the son of Anna Kurska , an activist with the opposition union Solidarność and a former senator , and brother of Jarosław Kurski , a journalist with Gazeta Wyborcza . He graduated from the Faculty of Economics at the University of Gdańsk in Foreign Trade . He worked on television , published articles in the independent and right-wing press, including the Tygodnik Solidarność (weekly Solidarność). He is co-author of the book Lewy czerwcowy and the film Nocna zmiana based on it , both of which deal with the dismissal of the Olszewski government in June 1992.

Political activity

In the 1980s he was active in the opposition and a member of Solidarność.

After 1989 he was associated with many right-wing parties. At the beginning of the 90s he worked in the right-wing Catholic right-wing Porozumienie Centrum (Center Alliance - PC), headed by Jarosław Kaczyński . In 1993 he took part in the PC election campaign before the 1993 parliamentary elections. In January 1993 he published the book Lewy czerwcowy , written with Piotr Semka , a transcript of interviews with politicians associated with the government of Jan Olszewski about the background to the dismissal of this government in June 1992. A year later he made the film Nocna zmiana , who deals with the same topic.

After the mid-1990s he cooperated with Jan Olszewski and joined the Ruch Odbudowy Polski (Movement for the Reconstruction of Poland - ROP) founded by the former prime minister . He was active in the presidential election campaign in 1995, after which he took over the office of press spokesman for the ROP. He spoke out in favor of cooperation with the Akcja Wyborcza Solidarność ( Solidarność Electoral Alliance - AWS), at the same time he criticized their rapprochement with the Unia Wolności (Freedom Union - UW). In the 1997 parliamentary elections , he unsuccessfully applied for a seat as leader of the list of the ROP in the Gdansk Voivodeship .

After this defeat he left the ROP and was at the head of a split of this party (the so-called "Stowarzyszenie ROP" - Association ROP), then he briefly joined the Zjednoczenie Chrześcijańsko-Narodowe (Christian National Association - ZChN), which joined the AWS joined. In 1998 he became a member of the Sejmik of the Pomeranian Voivodeship . From 1998 to 2001 he was Deputy Marshal of the Voivodeship. In the 2001 parliamentary elections , he ran on the list of Akcja Wyborcza Solidarność Prawicy (AWS "Rights" - AWSP) for the constituency of Toruń . Former Agriculture Minister Jacek Janiszewski was to run for office in the same constituency . Shortly before the list was submitted to the electoral commission, Kurski added to the list before Janiszewski without voting with another person of the same surname. Due to manipulation of the electoral list, Kurski was withdrawn from the ZChN as a candidate.

After the AWSP was defeated in the elections, he joined Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice - PiS). However, he did not get a place on the list for the local elections in 2002, whereupon he left the PiS and joined the League Polskich Rodzin (League of Polish Families - LPR). As a candidate for the LPR, he was re-elected as a member of the Sejmik of the Pomorze Voivodeship. He became vice chairman of the Sejmik. He was also a candidate for the LPR for the office of mayor of Gdansk, but did not make it to the second ballot. He was the defining author of the LPR's election campaign program for the European Parliament elections . In 2004 he got into a conflict with the leader of the LPR in Pomorze, Robert Strąk , and resigned from this party. Then he rejoined the PiS.

In the 2005 parliamentary elections , he was elected to the Sejm from the PiS list for the constituency of Danzig.

After Jacek Kurski approached the PiS again in 2004, he was mainly supported by Jarosław Kaczyński, while Lech Kaczyński was initially hostile towards him. Ultimately, however, he took him on to his campaign staff for the 2005 presidential election.

Among other things, Jacek Kurski organized the PiS election campaign congress in spring 2005 and also changed the party's logo. Before the second round of the presidential elections, he gave an interview to the weekly Angora in which he claimed that "according to serious sources in Pomorze, Donald Tusk's grandfather joined the Wehrmacht as a volunteer ".

As a result, he was removed from Lech Kaczyński's campaign staff. After that, on October 13, 2005, his membership rights were suspended by a decision of the party court of the PiS. A few days later, however, it turned out that Tusk's grandfather was indeed in the Wehrmacht, but because of a forced recruitment. On November 14, in response to Kurski's appeal, the party court ruled that the previous decision should be reversed, reinstated his full membership rights and limited the sentence to a reprimand.

In the 2007 Sejm elections , Jacek Kurski won a seat for the PiS for the second time with 23,585 votes. He was deputy chairman of the Sejm Commission for the State Treasury.

In the European elections in 2009 , he was the European Parliament voted. This ended his membership in the Sejm on June 10, 2009. On November 4, 2011 he was expelled from the Prawo i Sprawiedliwość party, along with Zbigniew Ziobro and others.

He is a critic of the circles he describes as post-communist and liberal - including the former Liberalno-Demokratyczny (Liberal Democratic Congress - KLD) and the Unia Wolności , or today's Platforma Obywatelska (Civic Platform - PO). In public statements he has often spoken out against the coalition negotiations between the PiS and the PO after the 2005 Sejm elections. He also criticizes the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza , for which his brother Jarosław Kurski works.

Legal proceedings

On June 13, 2006, on Polish television, he accused the PO and Donald Tusk's electoral committee that the election campaign prior to the 2005 Sejm and presidential elections had been financed by illegal funds from the largest Polish insurance company Powszechny Zakład Ubezpieczeń (PZU) should. The Regional Prosecutor's Office in Warsaw closed the case in December 2006 because it was unfounded. In response to the allegations, the PO sued Jacek Kurski for defamation and requested an apology in the media and payment of 100,000 zł in favor of Caritas . On April 3, 2007, the District Court of Warsaw passed a judgment, according to which Kurski had to apologize to Tusk in the newspapers Rzeczpospolita and Gazeta Wyborcza as well as on TVN i TVP and pay 15,000 zloty in favor of Caritas Polska.

Television director

In application of the reform of the public media in Poland , which came into force on January 8, 2016 and was controversial at home and abroad , Kurski was appointed the new director of the television station Telewizja Polska (TVP) by Treasury Minister Dawid Jackiewicz on the same day . He was able to defend his position in the context of a tender for television director. The Council of National Media voted for him on October 12, 2016 with four votes against one. In March 2020, Jacek Kurski was deposed as director by the National Media Council . He was reappointed director by the RMN in August 2020.

Web links

• Jacek Kurski's side as a member of the Sejm
• Biographical note on the website of the Marshal's Office of the Pomorze Voivodeship
• Entry on Jacek Kurski in the European Parliament 's database of MEPs

Footnotes

1. ↑ Article in Agora from October 16, 2005 ( Memento of the original from December 30, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF file; 44 kB)  
2. ^ Website of the Sejm, Posłowie VI kadencji / archiwum - Jacek Kurski , accessed on June 11, 2009
3. ^ Rzeczpospolita, Ziobro, Cymański i Kurski wyrzuceni z PiS , November 4, 2011
4. ↑ PO żąda przeprosin w sprawie afery billboardowej.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  In: gazeta.pl December 14, 2006 (Polish).  
5. ^ Bogdan Wróblewski: Yes, Jacek Kurski, bardzo przepraszam. In: gazeta.pl . Archived from the original on April 20, 2010 ; Retrieved February 3, 2016 . 
6. ↑ Journalist close to the government appointed TV chief. In: Spiegel Online , January 8, 2016.
7. ↑ Jacek Kurski pozostanie prezesem telewizji Polskiej. In: onet.pl . October 12, 2016. Retrieved October 12, 2016 (Polish).