Numerous Polish officials paint a bad picture when it comes to curbing the fish kill, do not inform politicians and citizens or prefer to enjoy their vacation. This puts the ruling PiS party under pressure. She reacted with fake news accusations against the opposition.
A Polish head of government who only found out about the fish kill in the Oder two weeks late. His Environment Minister, who does not want to say on which day she was informed about the disaster. And the head of the regional administration of Lower Silesia, who is on holiday in peace while the helpers at home salvage masses of dead fish from the river. Poland’s national conservative PiS government has thoroughly screwed up its crisis management when dealing with fish kills.
The cause of the environmental disaster in Poland’s second longest river is still unclear. But it is not only in neighboring Germany that politicians complain about the poor information policy of the Polish authorities. Dissatisfaction with the PiS government is also growing in the country itself. The opposition, conservationists and citizens accuse her of passivity and the arrogance of power. Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki had to admit that he was only informed about the fish kill around August 10th. Literally he said: “I found out about it on the evening of August 9th or 10th.” That was two weeks after the first signals of a fish kill came in Poland. Morawiecki has therefore fired the head of the water authority and the head of the environmental authority and has not ruled out further personnel consequences. But there is no sign of self-criticism at the PiS.
When Morawiecki was recently asked who was responsible for the failure of the information chain to the German authorities, he reacted in a typical PiS manner: He accused the opposition. Donald Tusk, head of the liberal-conservative Citizens’ Platform, had spread “fake news” and, with reference to information from Germany, claimed that mercury was the cause of the fish kills. “They really blossomed and kept their fingers crossed for the quicksilver,” Morawiecki scoffed at Tusk and his supporters.
Background: Brandenburg’s Ministry of the Environment had announced that increased mercury levels had been found – but at the same time emphasized that it was not known whether this was responsible for the mass deaths. However, mercury was later ruled out as the cause. The constitutional judge Krystyna Pawlowicz, a proven PiS riot maker, preferred to blame the neighbors. “Is the possibility that the Oder was poisoned from the German side also being considered?” she wrote on Twitter on August 13.
Because they are said to have informed the citizens too late about the fish kill, the Polish Greens are demanding the replacement of the administrative heads in five provinces that lie along the Oder. For example, the Lower Silesian regional chief Jaroslaw O Bremski did not consider it necessary to break off his three-week vacation, even in view of the bad news from home. The debacle surrounding the fish kill put a spanner in the works for PiS in its election campaign calculations. The parliamentary elections in Poland are not due until next autumn. But PiS boss Jaroslaw Kaczynski is already touring the country eagerly – his political opponent Donald Tusk is doing the same.
Kaczynski has recognized that another election victory for his PiS, who has been in power since 2015, is not a sure-fire success. Because the Poles are groaning under horrendous inflation – in July inflation was 15.6 percent compared to the same month last year. Despite various tax breaks, many citizens fear impoverishment. This becomes a problem for the PiS, which owes its popularity to the fact that it has expanded the welfare state in recent years to help the weak, such as pensioners and large families.
Polish commentators are now pointing out that mistakes in dealing with a catastrophe on the Oder have brought down a government before. During the Oder flood in 1997, then Prime Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz announced that those affected could not count on state compensation – because people who had not taken out insurance were themselves to blame. Cimoszewicz later apologized for his heartless remark. But the fate of his government was sealed.
