Poland: Commission Issues Report on Rywin Scandal
by Wojciech Kosc
13 April 2004
The commission charged with investigating producer Lew Rywin's 'secret' proposition to Adam Michnik reaches a conclusion on the scandal, but the final report has some members crying foul.
POZNAN, Poland--For several months, millions of Poles have been paying close attention to live broadcasts of the meetings of the commission investigating the so-called Rywin scandal, a controversy that has captivated the country and led Prime Minister Leszek Miller to announce that he will resign in May.
But by the commission's final meeting, on 5 April, the viewing audience had shrunk considerably, and as a result, only a few people saw what may have been the most tumultuous meeting in 14 months, with a surprise ending that bitterly angered several members of the commission.
Since January 2003, the commission has been looking into a meeting that took place on 22 July 2002 between film producer Lew Rywin and Adam Michnik, the editor in chief of Poland's leading daily paper, Gazeta Wyborcza. During the meeting, which Michnik secretly taped, Rywin made a veiled proposition to the editor: In exchange for $17.5 million, he would lobby powerful members of the ruling Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) to tailor a new media bill to the benefit of Agora, Gazeta's publisher and Poland's biggest media company. The proposed changes to the bill would allow Agora to purchase a television station.
From its first meeting, it was clear that the so-called Rywin commission was split in two groups--one that believed that the man who co-produced Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List was acting as an intermediary between Agora and "people holding power" (a phrase that has become a colloquialism in Polish speech), and a second one, with SLD ties, that insisted that Rywin had acted alone.
Opposition members Tomasz Nalecz, Jan Rokita, and Zbigniew Ziobro have long maintained that a group that includes former public TV CEO Robert Kwiatkowski, National Media Board member Wlodzimierz Czarzasty, and a close aide to Prime Minister Leszek Miller, Aleksandra Jakubowska, had pushed Rywin to act.
On 5 April, the opposition members on the commission got the unexpected news that a bloc of five members, led by the SDL's Anita Blochowiak, were backing their own version of a final report. After Blochowiak negotiated with less powerful commission members--including Bohdan Kopczynski and Jan Laczny--the opinions of Nalecz, Rokita, and Ziobro were left out.
After the decision, a visibly shaken Nalecz asked, "Let's take a little while to get accustomed to what just happened. Are we actually aware of what we just voted [for]?"
The final report adopted by the commission says that Rywin acted alone and that there was no "group holding power" behind him, and completely cleared Miller of all involvement in the multimillion-dollar bribery scandal.
After the meeting, Nalecz told journalists, "What we accepted is ridiculous." Blochowiak's report, said Rokita, was "deceitful crap," adding, "This investigative committee ends its work in disgrace."
Ziobro, a member of the Law and Justice party, said, "It's a great scandal and a grim day for Polish parliamentarism."
Blochowiak's only public comment was that she wanted "the truth."
RYWIN ON TRIAL
The Polish media have extensively covered the unexpected conclusion of the commission's investigation. Gazeta Wyborcza wrote that the adoption of Blochowiak's report constituted a blow to the already sinking SLD, which recently experienced a high-level secession when a group of parliamentarians led by Sejm Speaker Marek Borowski formed a new party, Polish Social Democracy (SDPL).
"Today's triumph may prove to be an own goal [for the SLD]," Gazeta Wyborcza commentator Juliusz Rawicz wrote on 6 April. "Because the public saw what it saw. ... Thanks to this, the lie that now passes as the commission's official report will not live long. And the Rywin scandal, instead of coming to an end, may be only beginning." Blochowiak's comment about seeking "the truth," he added, was "incredibly cynical."
The daily Trybuna has consistently supported the idea that Rywin acted on his own, and that the scandal owed more to Gazeta Wyborcza's ability to influence public opinion than to what actually happened during the July meeting.
In a 6 April editorial, Piotr Skura wrote, "It was only yesterday when Tomasz Nalecz, Zbigniew Ziobro, and Jan Rokita discovered democracy's rudimentary rule. Their votes count for exactly the same as the votes of [disrespected] Bohdan Kopczynski or Jan Laczny."
In the same edition of Trybuna, under the huge lead story about the commission's vote, the paper published several short interviews with commission members under the headline, "The groan of the losers."
Those "losers" are now reportedly considering producing a joint version of the final report to bring to a vote in the Sejm, which can either approve or overturn the commission's finding.
As the commission was finalizing its decision, the judicial system is just beginning to reach its own: Rywin is currently on trial on bribery charges in a Warsaw court. Rywin, who faces three years in prison if convicted, has spoken only once during his trial: to deny that he was attempting bribery and to call the audio recording that Michnik made "incomplete."
by Wojciech Kosc
13 April 2004
The commission charged with investigating producer Lew Rywin's 'secret' proposition to Adam Michnik reaches a conclusion on the scandal, but the final report has some members crying foul.
POZNAN, Poland--For several months, millions of Poles have been paying close attention to live broadcasts of the meetings of the commission investigating the so-called Rywin scandal, a controversy that has captivated the country and led Prime Minister Leszek Miller to announce that he will resign in May.
But by the commission's final meeting, on 5 April, the viewing audience had shrunk considerably, and as a result, only a few people saw what may have been the most tumultuous meeting in 14 months, with a surprise ending that bitterly angered several members of the commission.
Since January 2003, the commission has been looking into a meeting that took place on 22 July 2002 between film producer Lew Rywin and Adam Michnik, the editor in chief of Poland's leading daily paper, Gazeta Wyborcza. During the meeting, which Michnik secretly taped, Rywin made a veiled proposition to the editor: In exchange for $17.5 million, he would lobby powerful members of the ruling Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) to tailor a new media bill to the benefit of Agora, Gazeta's publisher and Poland's biggest media company. The proposed changes to the bill would allow Agora to purchase a television station.
From its first meeting, it was clear that the so-called Rywin commission was split in two groups--one that believed that the man who co-produced Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List was acting as an intermediary between Agora and "people holding power" (a phrase that has become a colloquialism in Polish speech), and a second one, with SLD ties, that insisted that Rywin had acted alone.
Opposition members Tomasz Nalecz, Jan Rokita, and Zbigniew Ziobro have long maintained that a group that includes former public TV CEO Robert Kwiatkowski, National Media Board member Wlodzimierz Czarzasty, and a close aide to Prime Minister Leszek Miller, Aleksandra Jakubowska, had pushed Rywin to act.
On 5 April, the opposition members on the commission got the unexpected news that a bloc of five members, led by the SDL's Anita Blochowiak, were backing their own version of a final report. After Blochowiak negotiated with less powerful commission members--including Bohdan Kopczynski and Jan Laczny--the opinions of Nalecz, Rokita, and Ziobro were left out.
After the decision, a visibly shaken Nalecz asked, "Let's take a little while to get accustomed to what just happened. Are we actually aware of what we just voted [for]?"
The final report adopted by the commission says that Rywin acted alone and that there was no "group holding power" behind him, and completely cleared Miller of all involvement in the multimillion-dollar bribery scandal.
After the meeting, Nalecz told journalists, "What we accepted is ridiculous." Blochowiak's report, said Rokita, was "deceitful crap," adding, "This investigative committee ends its work in disgrace."
Ziobro, a member of the Law and Justice party, said, "It's a great scandal and a grim day for Polish parliamentarism."
Blochowiak's only public comment was that she wanted "the truth."
RYWIN ON TRIAL
The Polish media have extensively covered the unexpected conclusion of the commission's investigation. Gazeta Wyborcza wrote that the adoption of Blochowiak's report constituted a blow to the already sinking SLD, which recently experienced a high-level secession when a group of parliamentarians led by Sejm Speaker Marek Borowski formed a new party, Polish Social Democracy (SDPL).
"Today's triumph may prove to be an own goal [for the SLD]," Gazeta Wyborcza commentator Juliusz Rawicz wrote on 6 April. "Because the public saw what it saw. ... Thanks to this, the lie that now passes as the commission's official report will not live long. And the Rywin scandal, instead of coming to an end, may be only beginning." Blochowiak's comment about seeking "the truth," he added, was "incredibly cynical."
The daily Trybuna has consistently supported the idea that Rywin acted on his own, and that the scandal owed more to Gazeta Wyborcza's ability to influence public opinion than to what actually happened during the July meeting.
In a 6 April editorial, Piotr Skura wrote, "It was only yesterday when Tomasz Nalecz, Zbigniew Ziobro, and Jan Rokita discovered democracy's rudimentary rule. Their votes count for exactly the same as the votes of [disrespected] Bohdan Kopczynski or Jan Laczny."
In the same edition of Trybuna, under the huge lead story about the commission's vote, the paper published several short interviews with commission members under the headline, "The groan of the losers."
Those "losers" are now reportedly considering producing a joint version of the final report to bring to a vote in the Sejm, which can either approve or overturn the commission's finding.
As the commission was finalizing its decision, the judicial system is just beginning to reach its own: Rywin is currently on trial on bribery charges in a Warsaw court. Rywin, who faces three years in prison if convicted, has spoken only once during his trial: to deny that he was attempting bribery and to call the audio recording that Michnik made "incomplete."
posted by BEING HAD at 5:23 AM
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