Fighting the 'uklad'

Uklad -- polish noun, m: arrangement, layout, system (politics, law)

Uklady -- polish noun, m, plural: connections

In the1980s, the Polish progressive rock band Republika released a song called Uklad sil, a title that can be loosely translated as "power system". The word is still the key to understanding Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the twins who hold the offices of Polish president and prime minister.

The brothers came to power in 2005 after promising to annihilate the uklad, which they denounced as a shadowy, semi-Masonic organisation of former communist secret service agents, ex-apparatchiks, unscrupulous businessmen and corrupt officials that seized economic and administrative power after communist rule was overthrown in 1989.

The Kaczynskis, who plan to make the fight against corruption one of the main issues when voters go to the polls on October 21, have repeatedly claimed that the uklad has continued to flourish during the past 15 years because none of the governments that succeeded the communists was prepared to weed out former secret service agents within the public administration.

Uklad is more than a convenient smokescreen for the government's own failings.

The putative nexus between ex-communist interest groups genuinely frightens the Kaczynskis. They are driven by an ideological commitment to confronting the uklad -- often at the expense of economic reform or a coherent approach to foreign policy. The twins, who work together extremely closely and agree on all essentials, argue that the uklad's influence permeates all the institutions of post-1989 Poland, including the judiciary, the National Bank and the mass media. The notion that a politically corrupt and morally bankrupt network controls the state also provides the brothers with the powerful ideological glue to hold their PiS party and its electoral constituency together.

As the Kaczynskis seek to highlight the shadowy links between politics and business in Poland, the next month will be uncomfortable for the country's oligarchs.  Last week saw a leak from counter-intelligence claiming that the country's top businessman had links with the Polish secret services and benefited from privatisation deals after 1989. Prosecutors have already said they will press charges against one of the country's biggest investors, Ryszard Krauze.

Nevertheless, the Kaczynskis' radical anti-uklad agenda may harm them. The twins preside over a conservative administration that focuses on corruption and security issues and adheres to a policy of defending national interests; all this suspicion may hamstring their ability to make an input into constructive debates.

The twins have won on an anti-corruption ticket before and are unlikely to change their tactics this time round. But if their desire to rid the "Fourth Republic" of dark forces is perceived as a paranoid, monomaniacal witch-hunt, this will play into the hands of the liberal Civic Platform opposition party.  If, as some suspect, the Civic Platform is preparing to form a coalition with the PiS, many Poles may be discouraged from voting at all in the October election.