Photographer: Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
(Based on report in Bloomberg Business) Poland’s right wing Law & Justice government in Warsaw has set out to rewrite the history of its fight with communism.
After four months in power, Law & Justice is on a collision course with the European Union, the nation’s banks and even credit rating companies. Now it claims to have found the smoking gun that undermines the idea that Poland really won freedom.
The narrative is based on documents that purport to show that Lech Walesa, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and former Solidarity leader, was a paid agent working for the communist authorities.
The 1989 uprising that ushered in democracy and a market economy was a conspiracy.
![Law and Justice (Polish: About this sound Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (help·info)), abbreviated to PiS, is a right-wing[13][14][15] national-conservative[16][3] political party in Poland. With 235 seats in the Sejm and 61 in the Senate, it is currently the largest party in the Polish parliament. The party was founded in 2001 by the Kaczyński twins, Lech and Jarosław. It was formed from part of the Solidarity Electoral Action (AWS), with the Christian democratic Centre Agreement forming the new party's core.[17] The party won the 2005 election, while Lech Kaczyński won the presidency. Jarosław served as Prime Minister, before calling elections in 2007, in which the party came second to Civic Platform (PO). Several leading members, including Lech Kaczyński, died in a plane crash in 2010. The party programme is dominated by the Kaczyńskis' conservative and law and order agenda.[17] It has embraced economic interventionism, while maintaining a socially conservative stance that in 2005 moved towards the Catholic Church;[17] the party's Catholic-nationalist wing split off in 2011 to form Solidary Poland. The party is solidarist and mildly eurosceptic.](http://handbill.us/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Capture-19-150x150.jpg)
A investigation by the EU into Poland’s democratic rule of law has played into The Law and Justice Party’s depiction of itself as a right wing patriotic champion.
The party was founded in 2001 by the Kaczyński twins, Lech and Jarosław. The party programme is dominated by Kaczyńskis’ conservative agenda.
The story is not new. For years, Walesa has fought allegations that as “Bolek” he ratted on his Gdansk shipyard colleagues. A special court in 2000 ruled that Walesa, who has largely withdrawn from day-to-day politics but remains a respected elder statesman, never collaborated with government agents.
Walesa’s past dominated media coverage in Poland last week, with tabloid Super Express splashing “Walesa Was Bolek! He Took Money” on its cover. Public television showed video footage from a 1989 meeting where dissidents and communists agreed to free elections, showing Walesa and other pro-democracy activists toasting and joking with the nation’s communist leaders.
“I wasn’t collaborating, I wasn’t controlled by anyone, I simply did my best,” Walesa said on Saturday in an interview with private television broadcaster TVN24. “Anyone could have done it better, but if so – where were they? why didn’t they take it over me?”
“Walesa may have been a puppet — we have to sort this out,” Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski told TVN24 on Friday. “This casts a shadow over the creation of an independent Poland and its political elites.”