Poland Not Yet Authoritarian Country

By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The victory of the Law and Justice Party (PiS) in the Polish election of October 2015 has brought warnings of incipient authoritarianism, even fascism, in that country. Some critics now call it an “illiberal” democracy.

Seemingly capitalizing on the frustration of many Poles who felt that they had not shared in their country’s economic prosperity during eight years of rule by the liberal Civic Platform, the PiS captured nearly 38 per cent of the vote, while Civic Platform finished second with about 24 per cent.

The party won an outright parliamentary majority – 235 out of 460 Sejm seats -- something no Polish party had done since the fall of Communism in 1989. As well, it had captured the presidency five month earlier.

Almost immediately, it was accused of dismantling democracy with policies designed to limit civil liberties, control the education system as well as state radio and television, politicise the civil service and neuter judicial independence by putting the Constitutional Court under its control.

There is no doubt that the PiS is a socially conservative, Eurosceptic and nationalist party, often at loggerheads with the Brussels bureaucrats who run the European Union.

So what accounts for the party’s continued popularity? Much of it is the result of its populist economic policies, which are in many ways on the left.

Many Poles felt marginalised in a society where successive governments espoused a “sink or swim” attitude towards citizens, irrespective of whether it was the left or the right in power. Individual success was emphasised above all. 

PiS’s more communitarian approach appealed to many Poles who felt they now had a party to vote for that was interested in more than just macro-economic indicators.

PiS promised them less condescension and more protection. It emphasised the need to tackle inequality and propagate strong welfare policies.

The party enjoys support among working class constituencies and union members. Miners, farmers, shopkeepers, unskilled workers, the unemployed, and pensioners, are among its electoral base.

The party leadership, in particular Jaroslaw Kaczynski, has also managed to paint the EU elites as “fanatical” multiculturalists and secularists who are furious that a traditionally oriented, non-politically correct government is in control of Poland.

Strongly Catholic in orientation, the PiS opposed mass relocation of refugees and economic migrants from the Middle East to Poland.

But Poland is still no dictatorship. Its civil society remains robust, and its economy is diverse and lacks media oligarchs, notes Jan-Werner Muller, a scholar of populism at Princeton University. 

Proposals to regulate independent media have been shelved, as were efforts to outlaw all abortions, after thousands of women took to the streets. 

Also, whereas other populists admire Vladimir Putin, Kaczynski loathes Russia – not surprising, given the historical enmity between the two countries.

Piotr Wilczek, the Polish ambassador to the United States, responding to recent alarmist reports about Polish politics, noted in a recent letter to the New York Times that the PiS government “is carrying out reforms in line with its electoral platform, which the voters overwhelmingly supported at the ballot box.”

He asserted that the government faces criticism by the political opposition and media outlets, something a true authoritarian regime would not countenance. 

“We have a very engaged free media, representing a wide range of opinions, a vigorous civil society whose expressions of different views can be seen on the streets, as is the case in the United States, and democratic elections, which brought the Law and Justice party to power,” he wrote. 

He’s right. When I visited Poland last year, people in cities like Krakow and Warsaw were not shy in expressing their displeasure with the PiS.

Of course it pays to be vigilant in defence of democratic norms. But there’s no reason to cry wolf at the present time.

Meanwhile, Polish President Andrzej Duda will visit the White House Sept. 18 to discuss trade, military, and security matters.

What Sweden's Election Tells Us

By Henry Srebrnik, [Moncton, NB] Times & Transcript

On Sept 9 the populist Sweden Democrats received 17.9 per cent of the popular vote in the Swedish general election; they ended the day as the country’s third largest political party.

In 2010 they entered the Riksdag, Sweden’s parliament, with 5.7 per cent of the vote. In 2014 they got 12.9 per cent.

One of its founders had been an SS volunteer, and some members wore Nazi uniforms to early meetings in the late 1980s.

They were too extreme to enter Swedish politics in the 1990s, but Jimmie Akesson, the current leader has moderated its image. As well, things have changed.

As elsewhere in Europe, the party has moved Sweden’s entire political spectrum to the right.

Their success will cause havoc in the Riksdag, Sweden’s parliament.

The centre-left Social Democrats, led by the current Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, have governed for 75 of the past 100 years. Since 2014, he has headed a minority coalition government alongside the Green Party.

The parliament also comprises four opposition parties that have operated as a group known as the Alliance: the Moderate Party, a socially and fiscally conservative party; the agricultural-libertarian Centre Party; the Liberals, who are NATO and EU enthusiasts; and the Christian Democrats.

In this election, the Social Democrats, who gained 28.4 per cent, remained the largest party, but they have declined greatly from the more than 45 per cent they received as recently as 1994.

The Moderates got 19.8 per cent, the Centre Party 8.6, the Left Party 7.9, the Christian Democrats 6.4, the Liberals 5.5, and the Greens 4.4.

Together, the ruling centre-left coalition won 40.6 per cent, good for 144 seats, while the Alliance, at 40.2 per cent, gained 143 seats in the 349-seat parliament.

A “grand coalition” between them may be necessary, unless one of the groups agrees to govern with the Sweden Democrats, who captured 62 seats – a gain of 13.

This remains unlikely. But Akesson indicated his party won’t support any administration which doesn’t give it influence.

The main issue that propelled the success of the Sweden Democrats was immigration.

Between 2010 and 2017, 983,000 people moved to the country. About 458,000 were asylum seekers, mostly from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

That is a big number relative to Sweden’s population of 10.1 million; the country took in more refugees per capita than any other European nation. Today 18.5 per cent of the population is foreign-born, mostly from outside Europe.

Initially the government, various organizations and ordinary Swedes did an extraordinary amount for asylum seekers. The Migration Agency offered accommodation and daily allowances. Sveriges Television launched shows broadcasting in simple Swedish.

This has changed. A 2018 Ipsos poll, commissioned by the Dagens Nyheter newspaper, suggested sixout-of-10 Swedes would prefer to reduce immigration. And 41 per cent of Swedes want immigration to be reduced significantly, while only 12 per cent want it to be increased. (The poll included 1,030 Swedish voters in an online survey, conducted between Feb. 9 and 19, 2018.)

Liberal Sweden had insisted it could absorb large numbers of non-European migrants without considering how they should be integrated. It is now facing a backlash.

Should Donald Trump be Impeached?

By Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial of Aug. 24, “The Forbidden ‘I Word,’” asserted that Democrats want to hide their only agenda for 2019: the impeachment of President Donald Trump.

“Whatever else you do, please don’t mention the ‘I word’ between now and November. That’s the public message from Democratic leaders and most of their media friends this week after Michael Cohen’s guilty plea and his criminal allegations against President Trump. Between now and Election Day, ‘impeachment’ is the forbidden word.”

Cohen, the president’s former lawyer, revealed in court that Trump asked him to pay hush money to women who alleged they had affairs with Trump. These were criminal violations of abstruse and complicated campaign-finance laws. He was also charged with tax evasion and bank fraud.

Almost simultaneously, Paul Manafort, a former Trump campaign chair, was found guilty of tax and bank fraud.

Should Trump be impeached and removed from office? I know I speak for very few Canadians, and probably not more than half of all Americans, when I say no.

We know Trump is a liar and a loutish man. I, an American citizen, didn’t vote for him in 2016. But so were Bill Clinton and Lyndon Johnson. Nevertheless, he did win the election and nothing he has done so far merits removal from office.

Actually, from the very minute Trump was elected, the political establishment (aka “deep state”), through its media agencies, political police, and judiciary, set out to remove him. 

It’s a shame the term deep state conjures up images of sinister conspiracy. Properly used, it simply refers to those who, though often unelected officials, wield tremendous influence and political power. 

The editors of the New York Times and Washington Post, for example, are two examples; billionaire philanthropist George Soros, a one-man alternate “State Department,” is another.

President Dwight Eisenhower on leaving office in 1959 warned about the “military-industrial complex” – just another name for it.

Whispers about impeachment, the most familiar constitutional procedure for removing a president, began to circulate even before Trump had taken the oath of office.

Remember the marches and calls for “resistance?” They began the very day of his inauguration. And he’s been under siege ever since.

His enemies have even turned a porn actress into a savior of the republic! You think I jest? A New York Times opinion article of Aug. 26 by Jill Filipovic was titled “Stormy Daniels, Feminist Hero.”

The Manafort and Cohen trials, as well as the ongoing Robert Mueller investigation of alleged collusion between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to win the election – still completely unproven and considered by many a “witch hunt” -- are politically motivated.

No one would have ever gone after those two men had Trump not become president, because such white-collar crimes rarely lead to indictments. 

“I really don’t think it’s about justice,” maintains the left-wing journalist Glen Greenwald, in an interview in the Sept. 3 New Yorker. “I think the people who are doing this are genuinely offended by the entire Trump circle,” and “they’re just using the law as a political weapon against Trump.” This is more persecution than prosecution.

The current hysteria over Russia’s “meddling,” were it not a weapon against Trump, would hardly have made the news. Added Greenwald, “anyone who criticizes the Democratic Party or its leaders is instantly accused of being a Kremlin agent.” 

What are the “high crimes and misdemeanors” they’ll get Trump for? Technicalities, mainly, which in other circumstances have largely gone unnoticed. 

Up until now neither the establishment nor the mainstream media has made a case for anything other than their dislike for an anti-establishment outsider.

Impeachment should require direct and undeniable evidence of specific criminal acts or abuses of power tied directly to Trump himself — not just to people around him.

Trump’s real “crime” was winning the election against the candidate of the political class that rules America. He is, in their eyes, an illegitimate president. This couldn’t be allowed to stand.

This was evident in the spectacle that followed Senator John McCain’s death, when they closed ranks to vilify Trump.

What the Democratic Party doesn’t realize is that they are making it the “new normal” to investigate, interrogate all known associates and acquaintances and relatives of an incoming president, to destroy that person.

Removing a president should be done through the ballot box, by the American public -- or American democracy will never be the same again.

Egypt's Coptic Christians in Trouble

By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The Copts of Egypt are over 10 million strong and have lived in the country as Christians for two millennia. 

Discriminatory state policies and political violence have historically marginalized Copts. There have been widespread attacks on Coptic churches and institutions in Egypt. 

All this provides the backdrop to the mission of Coptic Solidarity, an advocacy group located in the Washington, DC region.

Their ninth annual conference, held in Washington June 21-22, included six members of the U.S. Congress; Lord David Alton of the British House of Lords; and Alberta Conservative MP Garnett Genuis.

Coptic Solidarity President Dr. George Gurguis contended that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi pretends to be a “saviour” protecting Copts from extremists like Islamic State, in order to advance his standing on the international stage.

Sisi’s “friendly” gestures towards Copts have remained just that, as his government continued its severe discriminatory treatment and failed to protect them, their churches, or their property from violence by fanatics. 

More importantly, attacks on the Copts have continued with a ferocity that exceeds those observed during former President Hosni Mubarak’s rule.

The Coptic Church itself, he stated, has been co-opted and remains under immense pressure. It is in no position to provide moral support for the Copts in their struggle for religious freedom and equal civil rights.

Representative Dave Trott, a Republican Congressman from Michigan, also criticized Sisi, who frequently insists that all Egyptians are equal. 

“So why is it that there are no Copts in senior positions in the defense department, in the foreign ministry, in the intelligence department in the military. There are no Coptic governors and most significantly there are no Copts on the national soccer team. I think the bias and bigotry continues.”

Republican Congressman French Hill of Arkansas, who in 2017 introduced Resolution 673 in the U.S. House of Representatives, expressing concern over attacks on Coptic Christians in Egypt, was the recipient of Coptic Solidarity’s annual leadership award.

“I’ll continue to get engaged with the U.S. government, our partners and other governments and those groups like Coptic Solidarity that continue to speak out against the plight of intolerance and fear that many Christians around the world face on a daily basis,” he indicated to those attending. 

Genuis called on the international community to hold Egypt and other Muslim majority countries to the same standards, saying, “We should not be subject to the soft bigotry of low expectations when it comes to the issue of religious liberty.” 

Toronto-based Raheel Raza, President of Muslims Facing Tomorrow, noted that Egypt also has a number of smaller minorities who also continue to face marginalization and discrimination. 

These include Ahmadiyya, who are followers of a modern Islamic sect that is considered heretical by some traditional Muslim scholars and a small group of Quranists: Muslims who regard the Qur’an as the only valid religious source for Islam.

She addressed the problem of the large number of Coptic women and girls who are being kidnapped, forcibly converted and married to Muslims in Egypt. 

Often, she contended, Egyptian police and government officials are complicit, and kidnappers receive pay for each kidnapped woman.She suggested that it is important to compel the international community “to speak out against the atrocities being heaped on the Coptic Christian community in Egypt and pressure the local leaders to take action.”

The consensus that emerged from the conference is that the situation for Copts in Egypt is dire.