The ultraconservative and catholic government bans sex, jokes and nudes in TV.
On television screens no sex, no nudes, no daring necklines, no dirty jokes and no bold publicity are allowed. No ”spots” on condoms or anticonceptives. The same happens in the streets, where all unsuitable posters are being covered up, including those that recommend products used for intimate hygiene. This thursday the Pope arrives in Poland. He will visit various cities, he will sleep one night in Warsow and the other three in the Cracovia archbishopric, which was once the seat of the undoubtedly, imminent pious and saint, Karol Woityla, John Paul II.
He has to see a ” decent” Poland, even though it is a hypocritical one. Orders to this respect, are very strict and are going to be applied rigurously by the government constituted by ultraconservative catholics, with a strong tint of antisemitism, controlled by the Kaczynski twins.
The puritan surge demands, as well, that the screens carry no reference to beer and other alcoholic drinks prefered by the Polish people. All ”spots” must undergo a censorship committee which will impose four days of strict national ethics.
Frivolity, erotism, violence and vulgarities must not attract the attention of television viewers , because the government wants them to concentrate and get ready for the Pope´s masses.
With these moral detersives, the atmosphere will be clean and white. And life irreal. But the Pope will only be there during four days. Afterwards everything will go back to normal and the polish people will be able to enjoy the most popular brief publicity film in TV these days, in which you can see a young couple trying to make love whilst watching a football game.
Things will never be the same after Benedikt XVI gets on the plane that will take him back to Rome, on the afternoon of Sunday the 28
th, because the moralist revolution of the Kaczynski twins has set its designs mostly on television. Last year, in september and october, elections were held, first a parliamentary one and later a presidential one; so doing fifteen years of postcomunism were swept away. Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, 56 years old, short , chubby and similar, won the national elections with the PiS, the party of Law and Justice.
Lech is the President of the Republic, Jaroslaw is the chief of the party. They say that Lech, lawyer and ex-mayor of Warsow is the weakest of the two and Jaroslaw the real brain of the ultra conservative revolution. A Polish colleague told me that ”In Poland, the person that drives is in the back seat”.
The twins were counsellors of Lech Walesa, the great leader of the trade union ” Solidarity” who, together with Pope Wojtyla charged against comunism, which ended atomized at european level, between the years 1989 and 1991.
Walesa was President of the Republic but later, the ex communists who had turned over to the socialdemocrats , came back. The two presidential periods of Aleksander Kwasniewski lasted ten years. Post- communists left, surrounded by scandals of corruption and accusations of inneficiency.
The drive of the right wing has been irresistible and to avoid the mortal alternative of an agreement with the liberals of Donald Tusk or anticipated elections, at the beginning of this month the twins allowed two formations of the agrarian extreme right, ultracatholic, nationalist and anti- Semitic: the party of the Peasants Selfdefense and the League of the Families.
Thus was born the Stabilization Pact . which added parlamentary forces to help the minority government of the PiS, lead by the Prime Minister, Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, who doesn’ t have an easy life in Parliament. The ultramontanists will support, during a year, 144 propositions of law of the executive branch of government.
The problem lies in the fact that the new partners of the PiS party of the Kaczynski twins, are unpresentable. Adrzej Lepper is the leader of the Seldefense party. An ex-boxer, an agressive man of action and defender of those who are against the European Union, in which Poland has entered recently. The poor rural peasants are the bastion of Lepper´s leadership, the new vice-prime minister.
Still further to the right is the League of the Families of Roman Giertych, also named vice- prime minister, who has the support of Radio María, a catholic radio chain founded by father Tadeuz Rydzyk, who has three million faithful listeners, simple people, fearful of God,who live mostly in the country. Both are anti- Semitic.
Even though there are very few jewish survivors in Poland, those who listen to the nonsense of Radio María and to the followers of the League of the Families, think that there are millions of them. The problem has worried Pope Ratzinger, who decided to intervene before landing in Poland.
Translation: María Pensavalle
