President Lech Kaczynski had just paid his respects to President Bush at the White House on Feb. 9, when he gave a press conference outside on the White House lawn, and answered questions from reporters. One question came from a reporter for The Epoch Times who mentioned that eight million Chinese communists had recently withdrawn from the Party since the publication of the Nine Commentaries of the Communist Party" in The Epoch Times.
The Epoch Times reporter then asked the newly elected president about the parallels between Poland and China and for him to share his wisdom on how Chinese people could be free from communist tyranny.
Presidents may get asked many questions that are intended to embarrass or force a response that they don't want to commit to, but it was clear that this president welcomed the question. His first thoughts were: "This process is something that has already happened to Europe, including Poland. I can only by comparison tell you that at the beginning of the 1980s in Poland, we had 3 million members of the Polish United Workers Party, [interrupted, "the Polish Communist Party"] …the Polish Communist Party. In autumn '81, it was one million less members. So, already that was before martial law was imposed on Poland. Now after martial law was declared [inaudible], even fewer people remained in the Party."
Kaczynski was visibly delighted to be ridding his country of communist power. Fifteen years ago the communist regime ended in Poland, but the fall of the government did not suddenly eliminate all corrupt communist politicians and people in the government who owed their jobs to the regime. Upon taking office on Dec. 23, 2005, Kaczynski said, "The state is not working properly; it must be rebuilt and cleansed," according to foreign news media.
It's to be expected that the communist mentality would persist as Poland moved toward democracy, which realistically could not occur overnight. Naturally, the communists would want to try to somehow blend in and retain their power and influence in a democratic country.
This situation was just intolerable to Lech Kaczynski, 56, the newly elected Polish president and his identical twin brother, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who heads their political party, aptly named the Law and Justice Party (PiS). Their conservative party was established by the two of them.
Most PiS members, including the Kaczynski brothers, were at one time associated with the Solidarity trade union, which through massive nonviolent resistance, brought down the communist government. According to the AP and the AP Worldstream, the new leaders pledged to combat corruption, and remove former communists from positions of influence. Additionally, the PiS proposes making public the names of all spies from the time of the communist regime.
The Law and Justice Party takes a number of socially conservative views. Although it favors many social welfare programs, which in the West would be considered leftist, the party opposes the legalization of euthanasia, abortion, and registration of homosexual marriages. It also advocates the return of capital punishment.
The party is still finding its way on homosexual rights, according to one PiS leader. Wikipedia quotes the leader as saying in a TV interview that PiS does not yet have a clear policy on whether or not homosexuals should be accepted in jobs in which there is close contact with children.
Before he was elected president, Lech Kaczynski was mayor of Warsaw, and had twice refused permits for a gay rights parade.
At the swearing-in ceremony, Kaczynski, a devout Catholic, finished his oath of office with the words, "so help me God." This was an optional phrase omitted by his predecessor, Kwasniewski, a former communist, according to AP Worldstream.
What did the world leader think about the prospects of the downfall of communism in China? As he now battles former communists, corruption, and social decay in his own country, he ruminates a bit about the prospects of a China that is democratic and free of communism: "Certainly, a good question arises, what proportion is the number of eight million people to the entire Chinese population as opposed to the number of three or one million members of the Party in Poland? I believe we are now facing, and, we're now witnessing, actually, a period of transformation in China."
Other world leaders take it for granted that communism will remain in China into the foreseeable future. In contrast, a China free of communism is not an impossible dream to the president of Poland.
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