Poland’s ruling party tightens grip on big state firms

WARSAW: When presidential aide Malgorzata Sadurska joined the board of Poland’s biggest and oldest insurance company this summer, her lack of business experience was no obstacle. Her main qualification to help run state-owned Powszechny Zaklad Ubezpieczen (PZU) was something else-loyalty to the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party.

What PZU needs is “a person who knows the PiS program and is a guarantee that it will be implemented,” parliamentary deputy Marek Suski told radio RMF FM as the conservative PiS took to the airwaves to explain her appointment in June. Her task, he said, was “to implement the program of the government, which is to repair Poland.”

Sadurska, 41, is one of hundreds of loyalists brought in to state companies by PiS to

tighten its grip on big business and help it implement its conservative, nationalist-minded policies since it returned to power in 2015 after an eight-year absence. The aim is not only to ensure loyalty in major companies and give PiS a say in their personnel, investment and policy decisions.

It has also enabled PiS to use such firms as vehicles to buy out foreign interests in the banking and energy sectors, with a USowned news channel, TVN24, seen by some business leaders as a likely next target because it is critical of the government. Opponents fear public procurement and financing rules are being blurred, giving PiS access to large advertising budgets which can be used to fund publicity campaigns or events that promote the party’s agenda.

This, they fear, will deepen the concerns of Poland’s European Union partners about what they see as an assault on the rule of law and democracy since PiS set its sights on asserting its power over the economy, the judiciary and the media. Aleksander Laszek, chief economist at the Civil Development Forum (FOR), a Warsaw-based economic policy think tank known for its liberal view on the economy, said the PiS moves to assert control of big business were “exceptionally strong and brazen.” —Reuters