Poland divided on historic day

Thousands of Poles took to the streets on Tuesday to mark the 35th anniversary of the declaration of martial law by the former communist regime — in a vivid demonstration of all that divides Poland these days.

Opponents of the government walked through Warsaw, as well as other Polish cities, and then gathered in front of the headquarters of the ruling Law and Justice party, a building that also houses the office of Jarosław Kaczyński, the party’s leader and Poland’s most powerful politician. And the government’s backers staged their own smaller demonstration in central Warsaw.

The dueling demonstrations bring home that both sides of Poland’s bitter political chasm have roots in the Solidarity labor union that the communists tried to crush when they sent the military into the streets on December 13, 1981. The two are bitter enemies now, and both compared the other to the long vanquished communists. There is such deep disagreement that the government and the opposition couldn’t come up with acceptable wording for a joint parliamentary declaration on the anniversary of martial law.

“Today the authorities, like those 35 years ago, are attacking us, taking away our freedoms,” Mateusz Kijowski, the leader of the Committee for the Defense of Democracy, an organization that has organized numerous anti-government protests, told the anti-government crowd in Warsaw.

Kaczyński, in turn, addressed his own supporters. “They’re trying to compare the current government to those [communist] ones, they’re comparing the cleaning up of Poland to martial law,” he complained.

Since taking power last year, Law and Justice has attracted domestic and international criticism over its moves to control public media, purge state-controlled companies, and bring the country’s top constitutional court to heel.

Parliament on Tuesday was due to vote on yet another bill on the Constitutional Tribunal — as earlier attempts have been declared unconstitutional by the tribunal, verdicts the government hasn’t recognized. Parliament is also finishing work on a new law on public gatherings that has been criticized by civil rights groups and the opposition for favoring government and religious organizations in issuing permits for demonstrations.

On Tuesday, Kaczyński also called for restructuring the way opposition parties function. “From our side, there will certainly be efforts to bring order to the activities of the opposition,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Constitutional Tribunal ruled Tuesday that a new law regulating the public media is partly unconstitutional. The government refuses to accept its rulings.

The European Parliament is due to debate the situation in Poland on Wednesday, while the European Commission is continuing to put pressure on Warsaw, which has waved aside criticism from Brussels.

A new opinion poll by the CBOS organization released this week found Law and Justice with the support of 36 percent of those surveyed, while the two leading opposition parties together had only 30 percent.