Polish Archaeologist in Jail - for now

                     

A Polish archaeologist, Maciej Wąsik, is at the centre of a political affair and provocation related to the fall of the right-wing populist and national-conservative PiS political party as a result of the creation of a parliamentary majority after the December 2023 general election. The former ruling party has given up power and its acquired stranglehold on the state media with very bad grace, and the country's President seems to be on their side. This has led to a disreputable political circus. At the same time as he finished his studies in the Institute of Archaeology University of Warsaw (in fact he began studying when I taught there, but I do not recall him), he was active in the right-wing anticommunist Liga_Republikańska.

        Maciej Wąsik        

After he finished wit this, he then became involved in a number of things, ending up with him aligning himself with Kaczyński's "Law and Order" party (PiS). This led to him being involved in the summer and autumn of 2007 as an official in the The Central Anticorruption Bureau in the so-called "afera gruntowa" [Land Scandal], a complex corruption affair, or political provocation involving accepting bribes for the declassification of agricultural land. Wąsik was charged, among other things, of exceeding his official powers "and committing crimes against the credibility of documents". Part of the fallout of the affair was the ousting and political downfall (and later suicide) of Andrzej Lepper a controversial ally of Jaroslaw Kaczynski [and a circus involving a dictaphone and politician Zbigniew Ziobro].  

       PiS wives of their
       husbands on show

Things become complicated after that, Polish courts operate very slowly. In the  meantime Wąsik  became an MP, and thus had immunity, now that has been lifted. The guy has just been detained by police with a collegue in the same position (while 'taking refuge' (?) in the pro-PiS President's Palace) to serve the sentence passed down by a court in March 2015. At the time of writing they are in jail and one has begun a hunger strike. His supporters, anti-Polish Russian propagandists and their followers call both men "political prisoners". To me, the arguments supporting that label seem without foundation and intentionally divisive. Probably the President will issue them a pardon in the immediate future [the second time he's done it (!)]. In the meantime, his wife has been apperaring on TV, in a black dress, no makeup telling how his kids miss their father.