Blogging from the Highlands of Scotland
'From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step' - Diderot

Friday 14 September 2007

The seedy nature of Polish politics

I seem to be on a quest for 'seediness' this morning. However, this story doesn't just concern a minor local election as this one did, it involves the Polish presidential elections in 2005, when there were a series of bomb scares, which all turned out to involve sophisticated fakes. The scares were said to be the work of something called the 'Gay Power Brigade' which sent a lengthy manifesto condemning Warsaw Mayor Lech Kaczynski, who was running for president, to Warsaw media outlets (newspapers and wire services).

Polish police have now abandoned the hunt for the 'gay bomber' as they concluded soon after they began their investigation that there was no such group as the 'Gay Power Brigade'. Suggestions made by Poland's LGBT community that the whole bomb scare was a plot by Kaczynski's Law and Justice party to gain power can at the very least not be discounted entirely. One wonders whether the police have in fact abandoned the hunt because the most likely lines of inquiry might have led ever-closer to those around the deeply-homophobic pair at the head of Poland's government apparatus, brothers President Lech and Prime Minister Jaroslav Kaczynski.

The timing of this development is especially interesting, because the ruling coalition collapsed last month, precipitating parliamentary elections to be held next month, two years ahead of schedule. It is being speculated that the Left and Democrats, a centre-left bloc dominated by former communists, could hold the balance of power.

Expect to see more anti-gay scare stories being revealed in coming weeks in this strongly-Catholic country.

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