Here is another Guardian piece on the moves by the new Polish government led by Law and Justice to heave out key people from the state broadcaster and bring in new people they appoint:

Under the new law, senior figures in public radio and television will be appointed – and sacked – by the treasury minister, and will no longer be hired by the National Broadcasting Council. Under the legislation current managers and supervisory board members of Poland’s public broadcasters will be fired with immediate effect.

The ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party had earlier said it planned to turn the PAP news agency and public television and radio – all currently state-owned businesses – into national cultural institutions like the opera or the national museum.

The media measure is the latest controversial legislation introduced by the PiS, led by the former premier Jarosław Kaczyński, since it won a general election in October after eight years in opposition.

Late last year Duda passed into law a reform of the constitutional court despite mass protests and claims by the opposition that the changes threatened judicial independence. The Council of Europe, the continent’s top human rights watchdog, had urged Duda against signing the media law. On Tuesday the body’s human rights commissioner, Nils Muižnieks, appealed to Duda not to sign it.

The Polish government’s moves have prompted escalating warnings from the European commission that it could intervene, including two letters from its vice-president, Frans Timmermans, asking Warsaw for information. In an unprecedented move, on 13 January the commission will debate the state of the rule of law in Poland, which could theoretically result in Poland losing its EU voting rights on matters that concern the entire 28-nation bloc.

These idiotic EU noises come under authority Brussels has to act when there are ‘systemic threats to the rule of law’ in a member state. This is so obviously not the case in Poland now that one wonders what is making senior EU people act in this way. Probably they have been frothed up to do so by members of the former Polish government embedded in EU senior positions and their liberal-minded media pals in Warsaw. Anything less likely to make the Kaczynski tendency in Poland reconsider its position is impossible to imagine.

Here’s the comment I have added on the Guardian site:

When I was UK Ambassador in Warsaw when the PiS-led coalition was in power from 2005-07, I was startled to be sent from No 10 a ‘secret’ letter to the PM from a senior UK academic familiar with Poland who warned that democracy in Poland was about to be overthrown. Shock!

I replied that it was utter drivel, a completely ignorant or mischievous misreading of what the Kaczynski twins represented and wanted.

I see that many commenters here are again making similarly fevered claims.

Just one Big Point to think about.

When communism crashed in Poland the Solidarity leadership took a decision to draw a ‘thick line’ and leave the (communist) past behind. This was hailed by many people (but not all Poles) as a profoundly wise/moral move, allowing the former communists to join democratic society if they espoused democratic principles. Hence in a few years former communist President Kwasniewski beat Lech Walesa himself to win the Presidency.

PiS (who have plenty of ex-Solidarity people in their ranks including J Kaczynski himself) tend to think that that ‘thick line’ was too generous to the former communists and their privileged children, many of whom have done impressively well in keeping senior roles in public and business life and skewing public debate in a leftist direction. They want to recalibrate things somewhat so that Poles who do not come from that crafty self-serving communist tradition (or who have been historically disadvantaged) get a better chance. Hence moves now to clean out a range of people from eg the state media and the court system.

Imagine that a conservative-minded UK government wants to make the publicly-funded BBC less liberal-Left (as it trivially obviously is). It would take steps to replace a number of senior BBC people with other no less conscientious/principled Brits of a different political instincts. Imagine the shrill squeals and wailings from the London and Brussels chatterati.

Something roughly like this is going on in Poland, except that in Poland the political bias of the main state TV channels against PiS in the presidential elections last year has been an obvious disgrace (whatever you think of PiS) that needed and is now getting a swift kick up the trousers.

Result? In a few years’ time Poland will have elections as scheduled and PiS will do well again, or not. Democracy in Poland will carry on in good shape (subject to wider European convulsions of course).

Another story from those PiS-coalition years.

At a meeting of EU Ambassadors in Warsaw the nutty idea was proposed of us EU member embassies monitoring Poland’s democracy and human rights that (it was said) were being mortally threatened by PiS and Lepper. I politely pointed out that maybe it would be good if someone monitored what was going on in eg France, where Jewish graves were being regularly vandalised. The subject was quickly changed.

Poland like everywhere else is complicated. The people running it now are not stupid, are rather left of centre themselves in key respects, and have one of Europe’s most convincing democratic political mandates. Even if you don’t agree with them, spend a little time in exploring what is really going on, and why policies that look unattractive now may in fact turn out not so bad in a few years’ time.

Sound advice.