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By Witold Żygulski
"We wanted things to be normal, but unfortunately this is not the case," these words, uttered by Andrzej Barcikowski, head of the Internal Security Agency (ABW), best sum up the events of the past week in Poland. Political scandals abounded, and public authorities discredited themselves one after another.
Foreign Affairs Minister Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz, an otherwise prudent and even-tempered politician, clearly lost his calm after the popular weekly NIE published a big front-page text about the disclosed secrets of his ministry. Classified and secret information has apparently reached the wrong hands after hard drives mysteriously disappeared from 12 ministerial computers destined to be scrapped. The minister immediately accepted the responsibility and offered to resign, however, as could be expected, his resignation was not accepted: in the sensitive period on the eve of Poland's accession to the European Union, reshuffles at the top of the diplomatic hierarchy would be political suicide.
After 14 months of work in the spotlight and in front of television cameras, the special Sejm commission set up to probe the eye-opening Rywingate scandal has come up with a curious report to sum up its findings. By a majority of votes-thanks to deputies of the ruling leftist coalition and its supporters-the committee concluded that the film producer Lew Rywin at the center of the affair was not tied to any political group and that the corrupt proposal made to the Agora company was completely of his own design. In the light of testimony made by 50 witnesses heard by the committee-some of them summoned repeatedly-such an explanation sounds just about as credible as stating that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Now the report will be presented in the Sejm and the debate will probably reach the highest possible temperature.
In Iraq, Polish soldiers today are participating not in a "stabilization mission," but in a regular war. They are forced to defend themselves-and kill-in bloody street fights in cities engulfed by a Shiite rebellion. Fortunately, no major tragedy has occurred as yet; the Polish troops have only reported a few wounded.
Against the background of these sensational events, even the efforts of Prime Minister-Designate Marek Belka to enlist a parliamentary majority and create a chance for the formation of a new and relatively stable Cabinet to take over power as of May 2, have attracted less attention. So far, despite the optimism of the prime ministerial candidate himself, there is little indication that his mission will end with an easy success; most of the politicians that he has consulted so far about forming a Cabinet have failed to declare support from their parliamentary groups.
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