“I won’t even refer to the ‘100 specifics,’ because there’s nothing to refer to. We’ve become accustomed, throughout the entire period of the Third Polish Republic, to the idea that election promises are just that – promises. Even journalists, after elections, didn’t ask those in power what happened to their promises, because they knew it was all just a sham,” said Piotr Ikonowicz in an interview with Niezależna.pl, summing up the two years that have passed since the parliamentary elections. He admitted that “the breakthrough moment was the first term of the Law and Justice party (PiS), when, to everyone’s surprise, the government actually fulfilled very important social promises.” “And everyone was astonished, because that’s not how the game is supposed to work; you’re allowed to make promises, but you’re not required to fulfill them,” added the social activist.
Housing in Ruins
Piotr Ikonowicz, founder of the Social Justice Office Foundation, pointed to the pre-election promises made by the parties now forming the ruling coalition regarding social housing, promises that, like many others, have yet to be fulfilled.
“Everyone was talking about social housing, and nothing, no results whatsoever. I meet with mayors and city presidents who tell me they even have plots of land and the will to build, but there’s no money in BGK [the state development bank]. There’s nothing to apply for, no programs. And it’s local governments that are best prepared to build housing,” he said.
He also noted the situation in Warsaw, governed by Rafał Trzaskowski, claiming that “there are 200,000 empty apartments” there.
“And Warsaw isn’t an exception. If, gradually, we started taxing vacant apartments, starting small, from the third empty unit, those flats would return to the market and wouldn’t remain out of reach for most young people. But nothing has changed in that respect either; they’re all in the pockets of the developers, and that’s that,” Ikonowicz assessed.
Young People Without a Chance
According to Ikonowicz, “PiS left behind various traps, and Tusk is falling into each one of them.”
“A ‘fighting democracy,’ meaning liberalism with a strong hand, can lead to a very bad outcome, because once the carousel starts spinning, so to speak, the right could easily pick it up when they return to power. And now we have a situation where one minister of justice, whom another minister is trying to put in jail, threatens that if he regains power, he’ll jail the other one. It’s pure cabaret. Everyone in parliament is telling everyone else: you’ll go to jail. And that doesn’t bode well for the country. If they’re all focused on attacking one another, then who’s left to govern? I fear that almost all the political class’s energy is concentrated on fighting opponents instead of solving the country’s problems, and there are plenty of those,” he explained.
“The young generation has nothing to rely on. They can’t even repeat the modest success of their parents: a decent pension, an apartment, a car, and a small plot in the countryside. That’s roughly how my generation ended up. But young people today don’t have permanent contracts; they have gig contracts. And if they finally do get a full-time job in a big city, it’s for minimum wage, which you can’t live on in Warsaw, let alone rent a flat,” he argued.
Changed Views
Ikonowicz also highlighted what he considers a surprising shift in the ruling coalition’s stance on illegal immigration. He said this issue is an important factor in his overall assessment.
“One had a right to hope that if liberals were in power, they wouldn’t strip people fleeing the Taliban, for instance, of their right to asylum. But now, without even hearing what they’re fleeing from, they can be sent back, and they are being sent back, into the hands of the Taliban.
Suspending the right to asylum is barbaric. There was supposed to be a difference between the hard right, which doesn’t care about human rights, and liberals, who are supposedly different. But they’re not different. After all, Trzaskowski was imitating Mentzen during the presidential campaign. It doesn’t add up. You have to have a consistent view,” he stressed.
“I won’t even refer to the ‘100 specifics,’ because there’s nothing to refer to. We’ve been used to this since the beginning of the Third Republic; election promises are just empty words. Even journalists stopped asking about them after the elections, knowing it was all fake. The real turning point was PiS’s first term, when, to everyone’s surprise, the government actually delivered on major social promises. Everyone was stunned because that’s not how it’s supposed to work; you’re allowed to promise, but you don’t have to deliver. Later, in the second term, that spirit weakened, and once again, the hydra of poverty raised its head,” he recalled.
Success Not for Everyone
According to Ikonowicz, the most important fact is that “people keep singing praises about Poland’s success, while half of working Poles earn at or around the social minimum, they’re the working poor.”
“The proof of this is the lack of savings. The top 10 percent of Poles own 60 percent of the country’s wealth. That makes us the most unequal country in the European Union. These are Piketty’s findings, based on hard tax data, not declarations. Because according to surveys, 70 percent of Poles claim they’re middle class, yet they have no savings and no creditworthiness,” the activist explained.
“We live in this artificial horizon of immense social frustration. And the people who spread these myths about Poland’s success forget that when the national income grows, it does not affect the living standards of half the population. That contrast, that humiliation, drives people toward the extreme right, which offers them one thing to be proud of: the fact that they were born in Poland,”
Piotr Ikonowicz concluded.