Jarosław Kaczyński

Jarosław Kaczyński (2019)

Jarosław Aleksander Kaczyński ( pronunciation ^{? / I} [ jaˈrɔswaf alɛˈksandɛr kaˈt͡ʃɨɲski ]; born  June 18, 1949 in Warsaw ) is a Polish politician , former lawyer and activist of the Solidarność trade union, which was founded in opposition to the communist dictatorship . As chairman of the conservative party Center Alliance (1990–1998) and the national conservative party Law and Justice (since 2003) he was involved in the formation of several Polish governments and from 2006 to 2007 himself was Prime Minister of Poland .

Kaczyński represents a conservative and Catholic worldview. He is skeptical about closer relations with Germany and Russia and the progressive integration of Poland within the European Union . His twin brother Lech was President of the country until his death on April 10, 2010 . Jarosław Kaczyński does not hold any political office himself, but as the chairman of Prawo i Sprawiedliwość is one of the most influential personalities in Poland.

Career

In 1971 Jarosław Kaczyński graduated from the University of Warsaw with a master's degree in law and administration . He then worked until his doctorate in 1976 as an assistant at the university's own institute for science and university policy. He then worked as an adjunct at the branch of the Warsaw University in Białystok until 1981 . During this time he volunteered in the opposition Committee for the Defense of Workers (KOR) and in 1980 was briefly secretary of the national office of the free trade union Solidarność . While his brother Lech was imprisoned in 1981 for his political activities, Jarosław escaped jail because the police allegedly believed it was a mistake that there should be two Kaczyńskis with the same date of birth. Instead, he worked as a librarian at the Warsaw University Library between 1982 and 1983 during Martial Law .

Political career

Time of transition, government participation and opposition (1989-2005)

In 1989 Jarosław Kaczyński was one of the active participants in the plenary session of the round table. After the successful conclusion of the negotiations, together with his brother Lech, he was a member of the so-called Citizens' Committee, which, on behalf of Solidarność chairman Lech Wałęsa, selected the opposition candidates for the parliamentary elections in June 1989. In these elections, which led to a great victory for the opposition, Jarosław Kaczyński was elected to the Senate, the new, second chamber of parliament. It was he and a few other confidants of Wałęsa who persuaded the chairmen of the United People's Party (ZSL) and the Democratic Party (SD) to give up their previous role as compliant government partners of the communists and instead to form a coalition with the opposition Citizens' Committee. This paved the way for the formation of the first democratic post-communist government under Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki , which, however, still included some top communist officials. (see Wende (Poland) )

Soon after the turning point of 1989, Jarosław Kaczyński publicly stated that the post-communist transformation was not taking place in a radical enough way. He sharply criticized the attitude of Mazowicki and his government to draw a “thick line” under the past and their attempt to join forces to build a new, democratic and free-market Poland. Kaczyński, on the other hand, called for a ruthless settlement with the communists and a radical cleansing of the state apparatus of former cadres of the old system, as well as a stronger social cushioning of the tough market economy reforms of the then Finance Minister Leszek Balcerowicz. This political attitude manifested itself in the establishment of the conservative Center Union (PC) in May 1990, whose chairman Jarosław Kaczyński was elected. The Center Union, which, like Lech Wałęsa, aimed to break up the united political front around the Solidarność trade union against the communists and replace it with a pluralization of several parties, was then the most important force behind the election of Wałęsa as President as the successor to the old communist Wojciech Jaruzelski . After the election of Wałęsa in December 1990, Jarosław and Lech Jarosław took over important positions in the presidential chancellery. Jarosław became head of the chancellery, while his brother Lech took over responsibility for national security issues as minister of state in the chancellery a little later.

But the alliance between the twins and Wałęsa did not last long. They soon saw the president as an obstacle in the fight against the communist legacies and accused him of employing agents from the former security services in his office and of cooperating behind the political scenes with the services riddled with old communist cadres. After leaving the presidential chancellery, Jarosław Kaczyński increasingly turned to party politics. After the first truly free and democratic elections in October 1991, the Kaczyńskis achieved great political success. Its Center Union was not the strongest party, but after the failure of other candidates it was able to get the experienced lawyer and national-conservative politician Jan Olszewski through as prime minister. Its cabinet - according to the German journalist Reinhold Vetter - gave "a foretaste of what Poland experienced after the Kaczyńskis came to power in 2005" . In particular, then Interior Minister Antoni Macierewicz made speeches because he published compiled lists of people who, in his opinion, had cooperated with the former communist secret services. Olszewski's cabinet, which had meanwhile been supported by eight mainly smaller parties, finally broke up and was voted out of office on the initiative of President Lech Wałęsas - this is seen as the cause of the Kaczyńskis' continuing sharp opposition to Wałęsa.

With the deselection of Olszewski, the decline of the Center Union began, which failed to enter parliament in the 1993 election. With that, the Kaczyńskis lost political influence. It was not until the 1997 election that some functionaries of the Center Union on the list of the Conservative Solidarity Electoral Action (AWS), including Jarosław Kaczyński, made it back into parliament. In 1998, after eight years, he finally resigned from the position of Chairman of the Center Union. In 2000, Brother Lech Kaczyński became Minister of Justice in the AWS government and made a name for himself with a rigid law-and-order policy. Not least as a result of the popularity that Lech Kaczyński had acquired as Minister of Justice, functionaries and members of the Center Union founded the Law and Justice Party (PiS) in 2001 . After his election as the Warsaw city president in 2002, Lech Kaczyński gave the party chairmanship in 2003 to his brother Jarosław.

The "dual rule" of the Kaczyński twins (2005–2007)

Jarosław Kaczyński was sworn in by his brother and then President Lech Kaczyński (2006)

With him as the top candidate, the Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS) party, founded by him and his twin brother in 2001 , was just about the strongest force in the parliamentary elections in September 2005 . In order not to jeopardize the election chances of his brother Lech Kaczyński in the presidential election in October 2005 , Jarosław initially decided not to become prime minister and instead proposed Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz , the party’s internal finance expert, for this office. After failed coalition talks with Civic Platform (PO) under the PiS Marcinkiewicz formed initially a minority government, which on an informal support of the Polish League Families (LPR) and the party Samoobrona of Andrzej Lepper was dependent. Both parties joined the government in May 2006, giving them a majority. As a result, in July 2006, after internal party differences, Kaczyński replaced Marcinkiewicz, who had become popular with the population, as Prime Minister.

In September 2006 the PiS government majority collapsed after conflicts over the state budget and the deployment of Polish soldiers in Iraq . In August 2007, Kaczyński announced the end of his government and new elections. In the early parliamentary elections in October 2007 , the PiS lost its leadership role vis-à-vis Donald Tusk's PO , making Kaczyński the spokesman for the parliamentary opposition .

Jarosław Kaczyński (2007)

In June 2007, he earned international criticism after seeing the demand of his government after an anchor of the Ioannina clause in the Lisbon Treaty to the weighting of votes in the Council of Ministers of the EU and the population losses in the Second World War had founded. According to his argument in a live interview for the public radio station Polskie Radio 1 , without the experiences between 1939 and 1945, Poland would have 66 million inhabitants today. He also openly admitted in an interview that he wanted to consciously exploit German feelings of guilt towards Poland in favor of Poland. Even before the beginning of the subsequent EU summit in Brussels , the Polish government was politically isolated in view of his demands. In this context, the Polish media criticized, among other things, that he did not take part in the negotiations personally and that he only managed them by telephone through his brother Lech.

Opposition leader (2007-2015)

In the early presidential election in June 2010 , Kaczyński ran to succeed his deceased brother. He achieved 36.7% of the vote in the first ballot and qualified for the runoff election , in which he met the then Speaker of Parliament and Executive President Bronisław Komorowski . He had to admit defeat to his competitor with 47% of the vote.

In the run-up to the parliamentary elections in October 2011 , Kaczyński caused a stir in the German and Polish media with anti-German statements and attacks on the German Chancellor . In his book “Polska naszych marzeń” (Eng. The Poland of Our Dreams ), which appeared shortly before the elections, he indicated that Angela Merkel had only been elected Chancellor thanks to the support of the Stasi . In response to inquiries from journalists, he reiterated his allegations without commenting on the details of the alleged manipulation or providing any evidence. In response to the Foundation for Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation , decided in 2008 , he announced a “Museum of German Crimes” and a “Museum of the Polish Western Territories”, which have not yet been implemented. He entered the constituency 19 Warszawa I and was able to unite 202,297 votes, which corresponds to 19.88% of the valid votes cast.

Sole government of the PiS (since 2015)

Kaczyński in the 2015 election year

In the presidential election in May 2015 , Kaczyński decided not to run as a candidate, and instead the PiS nominated the previously largely unknown MP Andrzej Duda . This won the election in the second ballot. Duda was considered very close to Kaczyński or even influenced by him. It was seen as a sign that the president - although formally not party to the office for symbolic reasons - visited the PiS chairman late in the evening in his private home. In the parliamentary elections in October 2015 , Kaczyński did not run as the top candidate of his party, but left that to the more moderate Beata Szydło . During the election campaign, he was cautious about accepting refugees who might come to Poland. Only in the last week of the election campaign did he testify that these would bring diseases such as cholera and dysentery into the country, as well as “all kinds of parasites and bacteria that are harmless in the organisms of these people”, but dangerous for Europeans. Financial help should be given to the local people. In addition, their inclusion could lead to the creation of " Sharia zones", alluding to 55 so-called "no-go zones", which were mentioned in a Swedish police report.

Jarosław Kaczyński giving a speech on the unveiling of his brother Lech's monument (November 2018)

When the PiS and its allies in the Polish parliament passed a judicial reform at first reading in July 2017, with which the government can influence the composition of the Polish constitutional court, and the opposition, when criticizing the reform, also relied on Kaczyńskis in an airplane accident Had appointed brother Lech Kaczyński who died in 2010 , Kaczyński, who, contrary to the results of Polish and Russian investigators, considers the plane crash to be a targeted attack, described the MPs as "villains" and "traitors" who "destroyed" and "murdered" his brother would have.

In the summer of 2018 it became known that Kaczyński had commissioned the planning of a 190-meter-high office building at 16 Srebrna Street in Warsaw. It was to become the headquarters of the PiS, and it was also to house the Lech Kaczyński Institute, which was dedicated to the reputation of his twin brother and which in 2012 had taken over the media of the “Solidarność” press foundation, which are closely related to the PiS. According to press reports, Kaczyński's instigation had taken over several media outlets without the legally required tender. Jarosław Kaczyński negotiated the project for Srebrna spółka z oo with the Austrian building contractor Gerald Birgfellner, a relative of one of his employees. During the talks that Birgfellner recorded, Kaczyński stated that the state bank Polska Kasa Opieki would grant a loan on extremely favorable terms, and that the PiS government would do its best to promote it. Since Kaczyński and Birgfellner could not agree on the amount of planning costs, the two broke up. Birgfellner left the records to the Gazeta Wyborcza , which reported in detail about the circumvention of legal regulations in the project ("Srebrna Affair"). After the contract was terminated, Birgfellner billed around 1.5 million zlotys (around 350,000 euros) for the planning that had been drawn up so far. Kaczyński let him know that he saw no basis for this demand, whereupon Birgfellner filed a lawsuit.

Personal

Kaczyński is the son of Rajmund Kaczyński , an engineer and participant in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, and Jadwiga Kaczyńska (1926–2013), a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences . At the age of twelve, he and his twin brother Lech played in the Polish children's film " O dwóch takich, co ukradli księżyc " ( The two moon thieves ) by Jan Batory , a film adaptation of the novel by Kornel Makuszyński . Kaczyński lived with his mother, who died on January 17, 2013 after a long illness, in the northern Warsaw district of Żoliborz . He is single.

literature

• Peter Oliver Loew: Twins between Endecja and Sanacja. The new Polish right-wing government and its historical roots. In: Osteuropa 55, 2005, issue 11, pp. 9-20 ( online at Eurozine ).
• Adam Holesch, Axel Birkenkämper: From Kaczynski to Tusk - a German-Polish tragedy? Bouvier Verlag, Bonn 2008, ISBN 978-3-416-03235-3 .

Web links

Commons : Jarosław Kaczyński  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Jaroslaw Kaczynski in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Literature by and about Jarosław Kaczyński in the catalog of the German National Library

Footnotes

1. ↑ Jarosław Kaczyński, the backbench driver , accessed on October 5, 2019.
2. ↑ Susanne Amann: Populists in a double pack. In: Spiegel Online , October 5, 2005
3. ↑ Vetter: Where is Poland headed? P. 17.
4. ↑ Vetter: Where is Poland headed? P. 17f.
5. ↑ Vetter: Where is Poland headed? P. 18f.
6. ↑ Vetter: Where is Poland headed? P. 19f.
7. ↑ Kaczynski feels the defeat. In: n-tv , August 19, 2007.
8. ↑ Europe celebrates the turnaround in Poland. In: Spiegel Online , October 22, 2007.
9. ^ Stefan Tomik: Square root treatment for Europe . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . June 14, 2007. Archived from the original on October 27, 2012.
10. ↑ "Desire only what was taken from us" . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . June 21, 2007.
11. ^ "Gotowość nawet na weto" Z premierem Jarosławem Kaczyńskim rozmawia Jacek Karnowski . premier.gov.pl. Archived from the original on November 3, 2013. Retrieved October 1, 2012.
12. ↑ Poland's Prime Minister Kaczynski wants to use German feelings of guilt.
13. ↑ The unpredictable twins. In: Münchner Merkur , May 26, 2009.
14. Jump up ↑ Gusenbauer against time. In: Wiener Zeitung , June 22, 2007.
15. ↑ Good signal for Europe. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , May 17, 2010.
16. ↑ Kaczynski is on Komorowski's heels. In: Focus , June 21, 2010.
17. ^ Website of the State Electoral Commission, Wyniki głosowania. Retrieved October 24, 2010
18. ^ Election in Poland - Donald Tusk beats Jaroslaw Kaczynski. In: Die Welt , October 10, 2011.
19. ↑ Gabriele Lesser: Anti-German mood making. In: the daily newspaper , October 5, 2011.
20. ^ Website of the State Electoral Commission, Wybory 2011 - Wyniki wyborów. October 14, 2011
21. ↑ Inna Hartwich: “The worst that could happen”. In: Saarbrücker Zeitung , October 27, 2015.
22. ↑ Meret Baumann:Kaczynski's big plan.In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , October 21, 2015.
23. ↑ ^{a b} Kaczyński o przyjęciu uchodźców: PiS uważa, że ​​rząd nie ma prawa do podejmowania takiej decyzji. In: niezalezna.pl. September 16, 2015, accessed October 27, 2015 (Polish). 
24. ↑ Strefy szariatu w Szwecji? Jest reakcja na słowa prezesa PiS. In: tvn24.pl. September 18, 2015, accessed October 27, 2015 (Polish). 
25. ^ Konrad Schuller: Election campaign in Poland - language of hate. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine (Online), October 15, 2015.
26. ^ Henryk Jarczyk: "A Fascist Language" . In: Tagesschau.de , October 15, 2015.
27. ↑ Matthias Krupa :Once split and back.In: Die Zeit , October 22, 2015.
28. ^ Debate on judicial reform: Kaczynski insults the opposition as a traitor. www.spiegel.de, July 19, 2017
29. ↑ Co musisz wiedzieć o Srebrnej? Spółka politycznych przyjaciół Kaczyńskiego , wyborcza.pl , April 2, 2019.
30. ↑ "Żałuję, że zaufałem Kaczyńskiemu". Rozmowa z Geraldem Birgfellnerem , wyborcza.pl , April 2, 2019.
31. ↑ paid article: Ftd: Mud Battle in Warsaw. ( Memento from September 26, 2007 in the Internet Archive )