At this City Council session rejecting the night-time prohibition, the president of Warsaw, Rafał Trzaskowski (since it was, after all, his own “brainchild”), was humiliated – by people from the very party where he serves as vice-chairman, who killed his project. But he also humiliated himself by failing to appear at the session, giving the impression of fleeing the battlefield, commented Tomasz Łysiak for the portal niezalezna.pl.
The Warsaw City Council session, where the issue of introducing a ban on alcohol sales was to be voted on, turned into a circus. One of the saddest aspects of this distasteful spectacle was the way Civic Platform (PO) councilors treated ordinary citizens of Warsaw – who were effectively prevented from taking seats in the council chamber.
In Friday’s morning program on Radio Republika, Jan Śpiewak, commenting on the entire farce, said that “in Platforma, power is exercised through humiliation.” This is true: at this City Council session rejecting the night-time prohibition, the president of Warsaw, Rafał Trzaskowski (since it was, after all, his own “brainchild”), was humiliated – by people from the very party where he serves as vice-chairman, who killed his project. But he also humiliated himself by failing to appear at the session, giving the impression of fleeing the battlefield. This is the same Trzaskowski who in his book boasted about facing sharks underwater and who, in the recent election campaign, insisted on his “effectiveness.” Do you remember how, for campaign purposes, Trzaskowski created some kind of body pretending to be a Security Council, then walked among men in suits shaking their hands? It looked like a comedy sketch. Now he allowed a comedy to unfold at the session of the City Council where he is the president…
And there is another issue, perhaps even more important: during that session, councilors, politicians, and activists of Civic Platform (PO) showed how they treat ordinary people, citizens, the residents of the capital. A video showing a young bull from PO occupying three seats (!) so that others could not sit on them is indeed amusing (commenters compared the situation to the notorious “parawaning” on the Polish seaside), but in its deeper meaning, the gesture is actually terrifying: it reveals what Civic Platform (that second word in the name matters here) really thinks of citizens. Almost as if they wanted to convince us that a more fitting name would be Anti-Citizen Platform. That is, after all, closer to the truth and to the way PO politicians approach ordinary people.