Thread by @EreaAndrzej

🧵Dorota Wysocka Schnepf writes:

"1. Human imagination is limited. In #Poland 2005, did we imagine that the president and prime minister would soon be twin brothers? It sounded absurd at the time. And yet. We have once again astonished the world. We have stolen the Moon.

2. If the elections were to be held tomorrow, @pisorgpl would've to rig them to stay in power. Fifty to thirty-something - in most polls this is the ratio of support for the democratic opposition to the United Right's ratings.

3. Until now, it's been a worrying mystery as to how the large group of undecided voters of several % would vote. In polls already conducted after the 4/06 march, this number has essentially fallen. And the @Platforma_org ratings rose by about as much.

https://twitter.com/RKaznowska/status/1665385085548343296?s=20

4. Donald Tusk's team is on a wave that won't go down any time soon. If the success of the next announced rallies in the biggest squares of Polish cities is anything to go by - and I am willing to bet that it will be - this wave will continue to rise…

https://twitter.com/ObserwatorXY/status/1667943076470353923?s=20

5. and may carry Tusk's team so high that it'll definitely sweep Kaczyński's team out of the leading position.

And then there's the underestimated fear factor, which no polls will show. But we have empirically learnt its power in not so distant history.

https://twitter.com/OnetWiadomosci/status/1665270419908358147?s=20

6. In 2007, after two years of PiS rule with two other small populist parties, there were early elections. Kaczyński decided on them, hoping to win, strengthen his party's position and continue to hold power on his own. He was mistaken.

7. Nothing of the sort happened. Although PiS and PO went head to head in the campaign, and the last polls before election day even showed a slight lead for PiS, on voting day, just after the polling stations closed, there was an unexpected, powerful "boom"…

8. - here was Platform distancing Kaczyński's party by almost 10 percentage points.

We guessed that some Poles, already intimidated by PiS's oppressive rule, wiretaps, provocations, Ziobro, Kaminski, Wąsik and all the rest, did not want to openly declare other affiliations…

9. … But that Kaczyński would get such a booty from Tusk, no one predicted.

10. This year could be similar. Kaczyński knows it. He expects that this time the current opposition won't tactfully and mercifully evade voting in favour of bringing those responsible for numerous violations of the Constitution before the State Tribunal.
tvn24.pl/polska/oni-ura…

11. More - he's aware that there's no shortage of paragraphs in the Criminal Code for today's widespread law-breaking and thievery on an incredible scale. Kaczynski knows that if he loses, the 'Jail+' programme may indeed be implemented. That is why he cannot lose.

12. Will he impose a state of emergency? He has already practised how it works at the Belarusian border. Will he postpone the elections? He has already postponed the local government ones. Will he cancel them at Greek calends? Why not.

wyborcza.pl/7,82983,289048…

13. And by what procedure? - you may ask. And without any. He can do anything and is capable of anything. What is at stake is his to be or not to be. And his team remaining at large. And at the money.

14. Don't frighten us with @pisorgpl? The last eight years have emphatically proved how naive the slogan "don't scare us with @pisorgpl" was. Set in the reality of the first Law and Justice governments, however, the warning was mocked.

https://twitter.com/adam_abramczyk/status/1319377058871545856?s=20

15. Let's not exaggerate, they both steal, they're worthy of each other, they cannot come to terms with being separated from the trough - that's it.
For some, esp the young, believing in the myth of the elitist cesspit, this thinking lead straight into the arms of the Confederacy

16. Allow me to tell you what Poland will look like if PiS stays in power. If, by some miracle, it wins these elections. And actually not a 'miracle', but a multi-track manipulation - let's call it that for those who shy away from the term 'rigging'.

konkret24.tvn24.pl/polityka/inwig…

17. This process has already begun - hamper the votes from Poles abroad, set up voting commissions by the churches, pump it up with public service media and National Electoral Commission appropriated.

tvn24.pl/wybory-parlame…

18. And maybe some more "Russian" provocation will happen and the flag effect will be created. But still the victory is uncertain. Thoughts are already sprouting in Kaczyński's head that he will have to prepare better for the next elections.

19. That is, in short - it would be better if there were no such elections. So there won't be.

https://twitter.com/aldehyd10/status/1667458766181203968?s=20

20. This is the last election. Fairly still free. If PiS stays in power now, there won't be another one for decades to come. There will be dummy votes at best.

21. Like a dummy Constitutional Court, a dummy National Judicial Council or a dummy Law and Justice. The ballot boxes yes, but the result will be written beforehand. Besides, the threat in the opposition will be gone too.

22. Tusk, Sikorski and others will be removed from public life for a decade. The Russian commission will effectively present the evidence of their "betrayal".

And since the Penal Code is familiar with the concept of treason, the commission will be followed by servile prosecutors

23. …followed only by the rightly 'drawn' neo-judges, pronouncing such verdicts that the opposition will be nipped in the bud.

oko.press/pawlowicz-ujaw…

24. If PiS remains in power, inflation will steadily climb. That is to say, the plateau will reach new peaks and the president of the National Bank of Poland, Glapinski, will announce economic miracle after miracle.

wiadomosci.onet.pl/kraj/surowa-oc…

25. And on the whole he won't be wrong here - on TV they'll say that Poles are already as rich as Germans, but there'll be less and less in our wallets. Although, in fact, there'll be more - banknotes of ever higher denominations, for which less and less can be bought. Miracles!

26. As inflation rises, poverty will increase. Poles will die in even greater numbers than before. From poverty. And from lack of access to doctors. Who will take "let them go" seriously and will eventually leave. Overcrowded hospital wards will close.

medonet.pl/zdrowie,polska…

27. The nation'll stop reporting to clinics. Meaning people'll become healthier.

Experts'll sound the alarm and warn that the country's heading for disaster. The experts'll be definitively replaced. And all those other professors too. Enough is enough!

https://twitter.com/bezprawnik/status/1303967275373015043

28. After all, the command was clear: support, don't obstruct!

polsatnews.pl/wiadomosc/2019…

29. They said they were going to throw everyone out of public service media. And they did. All of them. So universities can be thrown out too. All of them! And by the way, you will create your own universities and cut subsidies to those who are not happy. And the fun will be over

30. And the young will enter adulthood as humble as in North Korea. Teachers will be provided with whips. After hours, they will be able to self-flagellate for their greed (they will keep asking for increases in humiliatingly low salaries)

31. … and inflict corporal punishment on children as part of their job. And the idiocy about human rights or some kind of equality will end. Minister Czarnek will be on cloud nine.

[corporal punishment prohibited in Polish schools since 2001]
tvn24.pl/wroclaw/nauczy…

32. Those who think that the activity of the authorities will be limited to the sphere of education may be fundamentally mistaken. Control of the web, which is already practically at work in 🇨🇳 and 🇷🇺, is also looming on the horizon in Poland.

telepolis.pl/wiadomosci/pra…

33. Kaczynski's irresistible belief that everything and everyone must be controlled has no limits.

Perhaps the Americans will succeed in protecting @tvn24 , but the Law and Justice party is aware that the attitudes of the younger generation are primarily shaped by the internet.

34. And all those who think they can hide from the apparatus of power in their private little oasis will be deeply mistaken. Control and censorship will reach out to them too.

The world will look at us first with astonishment and then with growing horror…

35. … how a country of prospects and herald of freedom can be turned into an open-air museum that will become a pale, embarrassing blot on the map of Europe.

A zone of glaciation in which minorities of all kinds have been deprived of their rights…

36. … education and culture have been reduced to a single, official mainstream, the economy has been devastated, restoring the primacy of the state over private initiative.

37. And at the end of it all is not only the marginalisation of Poland on the international stage, but also the lack of access to EU funds and perhaps even the return of visa traffic in Europe.

https://twitter.com/BartSienkiewicz/status/1429454435965706251?s=20

38. At the same time, the @pisorgpl empire will grow. The authorities are trying to create the impression that the enrichment of @ORLEN_Group and its CEO @DanielObajtek is the enrichment of all Poles. However, the perspective is different.

https://twitter.com/EreaAndrzej/status/1365174006320660480?s=20

39. The @pisorgpl elite will be rich in everything, the class of oligarchs preying on state assets will be strengthened, and society will get scraps from the table.

40. Let us be under no illusion - we, the public, are being treated as a post-serfdom mass. With our taxes, we will be feeding the voracious nomenklatura of state owners that the new elites consider themselves to be.

41. And so Kaczyński will creatively develop the words of the authors of 1981 martial law according to which "the government will feed itself".

If @pisorgpl only stays in power....

42. So if we find it hard to come to terms with the vision of a shattered state where there will be no democracy at all and the economy will barely creep, then recall my words: it is possible.

Don't be frightened by PiS? Well, then let's prepare for the worst.

43. The author, Dorota Wysocka-Schnepf, is a journalist at Gazeta Wyborcza and privately the wife of the former Polish ambassador to the USA.

wyborcza.pl/7,82983,298576…