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Post by Bonobo on Mar 2, 2010 22:34:29 GMT 1
Poland: Sex, drugs and scandal
Who said Polish politics was dull?
By Jan Cienski - GlobalPost
Published: March 1, 2010 06:13 ET
Poland's politics are not lily white, like this national symbol, the white eagle. The squeaky clean image of the party of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has been sullied by a cross-dressing, drug-taking politician. This photo of the white eagle was taken during Polish elections on Oct. 21, 2007. (Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters) Enlarge Photo
WARSAW, Poland — A sex and drugs scandal that has besmirched the reputation of one of Poland’s most respected politicians has now dragged down two opposition party members who refused to join the witch hunt against Senator Krzysztof Piesiewicz.
Piesiewicz, a well known screenwriter who collaborated with Krzysztof Kieslewski, one of Poland’s most celebrated directors, as well as a lawyer who fought for dissidents in Communist-era courts and a prominent member of the anti-Communist underground, saw his political and professional career destroyed this past December when a Polish tabloid published enormously embarrassing videos of the senator on its webpage.
The films showed the senator, wearing a flowery dress, in the company of two women and snorting a white powder, that Piesiewicz later said was “crushed medicine” not cocaine.
The video was peddled to the Super Ekspres tabloid by blackmailers — since arrested — who had reportedly managed to extract about 500,000 zlotys ($170,000) from Piesiewicz before he finally turned to the police for help.
“It was a set-up,” Piesiewicz told the tabloid. “I don’t know if something was not thrown in my drink. I am completely normal. It was the only incident of its kind in my life.”
Piesiewicz’s downfall came as an embarrassment to the ruling Civic Platform party. Although Piesiewicz gave up his party membership, Donald Tusk, the prime minister, cut himself off from the errant legislator. Tusk and his party have long presented themselves as squeaky clean in moral and criminal matters, and with presidential elections this year and legislative elections in 2011, being caught up in a messy scandal could damage Civic Platform.
That was the hope of the right-wing opposition Law and Justice party (PiS), which had counted on turning Piesiewicz’s troubles to its own advantage. Newspaper columnists close to the party denounced the senator’s “immorality” and demanded that he apologize to the Polish people before withdrawing from public life.
However, a recent vote in the senate to remove Piesiewicz’s parliamentary immunity has now blown up in the face of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, PiS’s leader. Two leading PiS senators, both of them with long traditions in the anti-Communist underground, refused to go along with Kaczynski’s demand that Piesiewicz be stripped of his immunity to face investigation for possible drug possession charges.
One of the two, Zbigniew Romaszewski, a prickly and argumentative, albeit respected politician, said that he had no intention of taking orders from Kaczynski in a matter of conscience. |
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Post by Bonobo on Jul 21, 2011 18:22:36 GMT 1
Shamed senator to stand again
20.07.2011 13:22
Shamed senator Krzysztof Piesiewicz, who was blackmailed over compromising footage involving prostitutes and the snorting of a white powder, has announced that he will stand again in the forthcoming elections to Poland’s upper parliamentary house.
The move comes after Piesiewicz said a year ago that he would be leaving the political scene.
The former lawyer, who once defended Solidarity heroes such as Father Jerzy Popieluszko,murdered by communist secret police in 1984, and co-wrote scripts to films by acclaimed director Krzysztof Kieslowski, was publicly humiliated in 2009 when amateur footage was released by tabloid Super Express.
The recording, in which Piesiewicz is seen sporting a dress and snorting a white powder, was apparently sold after the senator stopped paying his blackmailers. The blackmail case eventually went to court. Meanwhile, Piesiewicz denied that he was taking contraband narcotics in the footage.
“I did not harm anyone, I’m an honest man,” Piesiewicz declared earlier this week, as his campaign was set in motion. “The voters will decide. People know perfectly well that in spite of the incident, I have never disappointed them.”
Piesiewicz will be standing again for the Civic Platform, the key party in the current ruling coalition in the Sejm lower parliamentary house. 
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Post by Bonobo on Aug 5, 2011 21:05:29 GMT 1
A controvercial politician involved in sex scandal died today:
Andrzej Lepper, a former deputy prime minister and a highly controversial figure on Poland's political scene over the last two decades, has been found dead at his party HQ in Warsaw.
Initial reports suggest he commited suicide.
Party colleague Janusz Maksymiuk told TVP television that he had met with Lepper yesterday but that there was "no sign that anything was wrong".
"Andrzej Lepper was a hard man. I can't imagine what would make him [commit suicide]," Maksymiuk added.
Chief of police spokesman Mariusz Sokolowski told the PAP news agency that all indications are that Lepper, 57 years old, hanged himself.
The once noisy, publicity-seeking rural trade unionist-turned politician became embroiled in corruption and sex scandals in his later years, which effectively ended his parliamentary career.
Lepper, born 13 June 1954, first made a name for himself as the leader of the Samoobrona (Self Defence) rural trade union, leading hunger strikes in the 1990s against farm repossessions and roadblocks for better deals for the farming community.
His maverick, populist style won him many supporters who felt excluded by the post-communist establishment and he eventually entered parliament as an MP under the Self Defence banner.
Lepper's political career reached a peak when his party entered into a coalition with Law and Justice after the 2005 general election. Still with his trademark perma-tan and quiff, he became agricultural minister and deputy prime minister.
His 'third way' politics - he argued Poland should form a new style of economy between capitalism and socialism - gained him some unusual friends, such as Belarus's authoritarian president Alexander Lukashenko and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.
But trouble seemed to follow Lepper's career. He was accused of being involved in a land corruption scandal which eventually led to his dismissal as deputy prime minister and the downfall of the Law and Justice-led coalition.
He was also accused by a Self Defence party worker of asking her for sexual favours to advance up the party ladder.
In March this year a court in Lodz, central Poland, ordered that the sex case be re-tried on technicalities, although his party colleague, Stanislaw Lyzwinski received a prison sentence for rape, among other charges.
Lepper leaves behind a wife, Irena, and three children. |
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