Kaczyński brands Poland's wealthiest as communist collaborators
PR dla Zagranicy
Nick Hodge
18.03.2016 17:59
Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of Poland's ruling Law and Justice party, has claimed that the overwhelming majority of the country's wealthiest citizens are former communist collaborators.
Jarosław Kaczyński with Minister of Agriculture Krzysztof Jurgiel. Photo: PAP/Bartłomiej Zborowski
“Today, at the peak of the Polish hierarchy of wealth, are people 80 percent of whom were collaborators of the State Security Services,” he told the Rzeczpospolita daily.
“So they have extremely bad qualities, and this has had a negative impact on the shape of our economic life,” he continued.
When the interviewer noted that two generations have come of age since the end of communism, Kaczyński said that children of communists are still ubiquitous in public life.
The 66-year-old party leader argued that “if drastic action had been taken" after 1989 to punish members of the old regime then Poland “would have been a visibly more prosperous country, and simultaneously a much better organised and more just one.”
Ryszard Petru, head of opposition party Nowoczesna, described Kaczyński's comments as “very aggressive,” adding that Kaczyński was “on form - in other words offending everyone”. (nh/pk)