The head of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, Jarosław Kaczyński, told thousands of his party’s activists and supporters gathered in the southern Polish city of Katowice that Tusk and his “merry men” were determined to return to the old ways that the country had seen in the period after 1989.
According to the ruling party leader, the foreign and security policy pursued by the Tusk government was one of “neglect,” marked by cuts in military spending and plans that in the event of a Russian invasion, half of the country would be abandoned and only the parts to the west of the Vistula River would actually be defended. He called that “Tusk’s line of shame.”
He also accused Tusk of making Poland subordinate to foreign powers such as Germany and Russia.
Kaczyński reminded how the Tusk administration had been passive with regard to opposing the two Russian-German Nord Stream pipelines and had cooled Poland’s relations with the USA to satisfy Germany, while totally ignoring the development of relations in the region of Central and Eastern Europe. “That was tantamount to a betrayal of Poland’s security and interests,” argued Kaczyński.
The PiS leader also said that Tusk’s government had engaged in asset stripping of the public sector and had failed to collect taxes and other revenues needed for Poland to have an active social policy.
He also criticized the former government for tolerating low wages and high unemployment. He concluded that Tusk was a man “possessed by neo-liberal ideology” committed to an inactive and passive state.
Kaczyński contrasted the stance taken by Tusk’s administration with that of the present PiS government. He was proud that PiS had managed to tighten up the tax system for resources to be made available for social policy, education, and the arts, and warned that the return of Donald Tusk would put all of that at risk.
