The Independence Day musings

Last Sunday PiS was given a marvellous beating in the run-off of mayoral elections. The party’s candidates were turned down in nearly all cities, including strongholds of Kaczynski’s grouping such as Radom or Podkarpackie province. With Chelm (63 thousand residents) being the largest city where elected mayor hails from PiS, the ruling party has seen a middle finger showed by non-rural electorate. In provincial Poland, the party keeps faring well though.

Tomorrow is a bank holiday. Formally enacted three working days in advance, plunging into chaos most entities whose workings are not based on spontaneity. An additional day off was put forward and passed into law by lawmakers and their notary who have little notion about how real life functions and definitely have never had insight into how difficult running an enterprise is. This unwanted gift, being a blatant violation of basic rules governing legislative process in a civilised country where a government is a predictable lawmakers, comes in useful especially for those willing to get tanked up today evening and cure hangover tomorrow (pardon, celebrate the Independence Day in dignity). My workload is not going to diminish because of the additional day off, but delay in my remont (slowly moving forward) will be one day longer and I will have to stay overtime to make up for the time lost tomorrow (hopefully the weather gets clement). Those far worse off are the ones who had doctor appointments or court hearings scheduled for tomorrow and will have to wait several months for another ones. Everyone had known in advance 11 November would fall on Sunday in 2018, the additional day off could have been decided several months ago, our economy would have afforded an extra day, but would have been spared the accompanying chaos.

The bank holiday was not the only part of celebrations organised at eleventh hour. On Wednesday, as the mayor of Warsaw banned (ineffectively, but respect to court ruling is overriding virtue) the nationalists’ march, president Duda and prime minister Morawiecki staged their own one. The upshot was that the government had to negotiate a common event with the far-right organisations. In practice, though formally there was only on march, it got split up into politicians of PiS marching peacefully at the front, and a whole lot biggest group of neo-fascists (and ordinary citizens) chasing them (shortly after 4 p.m. prominent politicians made away from the scene in their limousines). The nationalists, predictably duped the government, as the march was meant to be devoid of several symbols which were visible. The good thing is that riots did not break up and acts of vandalism were sparse, if any.

My own perception and pursuit of patriotism do not square with flag waving. I define patriotism as paying taxes, not throwing rubbish anywhere else but to bins, looking after common property, observance of law, respect for fellow men, small deeds which make a community’s life more comfortable.

Actually such shameful outcome of Independence Day celebrations is astonishing given how pompous in terms of patriotism the ruling party is. The upside of the disgrace is that with every next misstep, with every little piece their screw up, the number of mobilised opponents of the party grows. In less than a year, the government of PiS might be a memory (though at the moment the most realistic scenario is PiS winning, but lacking absolute majority and bound to eat up its coalitional partner or buy off single deputies from other parties), yet this is too little to be cheerful. Even if the oppositional parties get their act together or rather the ruling party continues with its string of failures, victory of Koalicja Obywatelska is not enough. Firstly, the winners must not fall out over the power sharing. Secondly, they must come up with a comprehensive plan how to mend what has been spoilt by PiS since 2015. Thirdly, several millions Poles being avid believers of Kaczynski still live in this country and this is their homeland as well, no matter how horrific their mindset for non-PiSites is. Few reasons for joy, several reasons to pull up sleeves, lots of work lies ahead.