We will be pleased if Readers wish to express their opinion about “Głos”, which is, after all, your publication. We have our devoted fans and staunch opponents, we have “competition”, support and opposition, achievements and prospects (the support of IDEE – the Warsaw Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe, which has included us among the 100 leading publications in the country, with a potential chance of qualifying for the elite “Top Ten” of self-financing publications. We have a favourable climate in the local government (among most councillors), and the possibility of transforming into the monthly “Głos Ziemi Bolesławieckiej” (a sample appears in this issue). What next? Should we be a left-wing or right-wing publication, apolitical and independent (as until now), the organ of the Towarzystwo Miłośników Bolesławca or of local governments, an information bulletin or a supplement to the popular-scientific “Rocznik Ziemi Bolesławieckiej”, a cultural and social periodical or a tabloid, today’s fashionable “pistol” chasing sensations? We ask you for your own reflections, proposals, constructive criticism and comparisons. This will undoubtedly allow the editorial team of civic-minded hobbyists to work even better. On this occasion, let us recall some of “Głos” and TBM’s more interesting initiatives:
- a fundraising campaign (over 800 million zł) for “Dar Serca” and the purchase of medical equipment for the local hospital (a cardiac ultrasound machine and a surgical set for laryngology),
- “Dar Serca II” – raising over 500 million zł to purchase a laparoscope, which will happen shortly (the device is worth 1 billion zł),
- the citywide “Balcony Beautification Competition”,
- a poll for the best athlete and coach,
- events: “Christmas Eve for the Lonely” and “Carnival Parties for Children” from the Children’s Home,
- sponsorship of celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of Bolesławiec’s return to the motherland
- construction of the Kresowiacy Monument,
- publication of Bolesławiec prints (Bancewicz), postcards (Żuralski), Bolesławiec calendars, and preparation of an album about Bolesławiec (colour, watercolours by Kozłowski),
- celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the return of the Yugoslav Polonia.
In Bolesławiec, “war at the grassroots” was eagerly and loudly announced. How can an oasis of peace and happiness exist in a sea of dirty foam, in the inns of neighbouring municipalities, amid vilification, undermining, throat-grabbing, kicking, smearing and pious aggression against anyone who thinks differently? The Bolesławiec consensus was unacceptable to the new, “only righteous force”, which wants a monopoly on truth and right, while the existence of an independent publication was simply impossible to swallow. A swarm of self-styled “pampers”, each carrying in his backpack, if not a marshal’s baton, then at least a pen plucked from Pegasus’s wings, tried to surround the unconquered fortress that “Głos Bolesławca” proved to be from every side. Finally, the assault began, ending in… a Pyrrhic victory. For I am leaving, while “Głos”, independent in its views and opinions, remains, additionally strengthened by the municipalities of Nowogrodziec and Osiecznica. I would therefore like to thank my opponents and adversaries for helping me make this decision: I felt awkward leaving my fellow civic activists, but today I have an excellent pretext and a comfortable position as someone hounded and pursued by “brilliant destroyers”. It is only a pity that those ideological orthodoxes failed to notice that their time has passed irrevocably, that it is already 1996 and Poland is no longer the same. But that is their concern.
I assure you that I have a sufficiently sharp pen and a flexible tongue to write as a journalist wherever I choose. That is what my true independence consists of: I really do not have to do anything – neither wallow in the mud poured out by frustrated, undereducated and unhappy opponents, nor seek dominion over souls, honours or fame, nor fight for money. I do not have to yield to primitive indoctrination, court the favour of party bigwigs, identify with a chosen ideology or serve some masters while remaining in humiliating dependence. To be one’s own master, helmsman and ship – that is true freedom, and no one can take it from me. The “great politicians” at the local level cannot understand this – regardless of their colour, faction or side. I sincerely pity them: the positions in their contrived world of idées fixes are crumbling, the “bright future” is slipping from their hands, and the bitterness of defeat remains…
The “dangerous” attacks in the pages of the declining “Łużyce” or a local little paper whose name I will not even mention irritated me less than they amused me. They wanted to hold me accountable for my views, but this is a downright bizarre, foolhardy and impossible undertaking: I have sufficient broad knowledge and life experience to remain faithful to my own convictions, including those concerning our national history and local achievements. Gentlemen – do not waste your time and paper; concern yourselves with more serious problems of the local-government community. You may write me off. I read those notorious “charges” against me in the pages of the predecessor of today’s Bolesławiec “newspaper”, and I laughed sincerely then too. Today, the same author has to use a pseudonym while eagerly awaiting a reply. Well – I will not stoop to his level of polemic. And, as an aside, I feel disgust for all secret services without exception, as well as cowardly informers, hack writers, secret collaborators and crackpots. I abhor slander and boorish methods of combat, while hatred is characteristic of primitive people. I have none of it in me – I am too happy with the prose and poetry of everyday life to burden anyone with negative feelings, adversaries included. Take my word for it: you cannot destroy my psychological equilibrium. Also because I studied psychology at length and in depth, and privately consider it the queen of the sciences. On this occasion I will “declassify” your scenario of a “civil war at the grassroots” in order to prevent it. The first concentrated attack targets “Głos Bolesławca” and my modest person. Under the ideological banners of “a free press”, market competition, independence, truth, defence of ideals, and so on. Pure demagogy, but what is this really about? It is simple – money for one’s own people; an independent TMB publication is suspicious and alien, something one cannot control. Private is better, and private interest is downright perfect. Well – as a warning to those concerned, let me recall the sad, though instructive, fate of editor Tomasz Wołek from the capital’s private “Życie Warszawy”. It is not the journalist but the newspaper owner who remains the decision-maker and almost the arbiter of human fate. So perhaps we should not sing the praises of the “independence” of the media and the “fourth estate”, because we are still far from the far-from-perfect model of Western democracies.
The Bolesławiec branch of Unia Wolności “expresses its opposition to a subsidy for the newspaper ‘Głos Bolesławca’ from the city budget”. This is not a subsidy, but support for the social initiatives of Towarzystwo Miłośników Bolesławca, and there are many of them, and they are of great importance and significance for the city. Nor are we a newspaper, but a monthly publication, which is quite an important difference (a TMB publication). Thanks to us, the local hospital will receive another medical device worth over 1 billion zł this year. Which other so-called local newspaper initiates this kind of action? And this is not the only example. Let us recall the results of previous collections for the “Dar Serca” campaign initiated by us: modern ECG devices and equipment for the Laryngology Department. And that is not all: we sponsored the construction of the Kresowiacy Monument, and now we are preparing to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the return of Polonia from Yugoslavia. It is our ideas – including the celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of Bolesławiec’s Return to the Motherland – that consolidate the local-government community. There is nothing of political particularism in this; instead, there are genuine, apt social initiatives that enrich the model of local democracy.
Our initiatives were noticed far beyond Bolesławiec, at the Warsaw Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe, which suggested assistance in making the publication financially independent. We will accept this assistance, and then the “crocodile tears” of the righteous members of Unia Wolności will not be needed. At IDEE, we are valued for organising the sports poll, the balcony competition, Christmas Eve gatherings for the lonely, carnival parties for children from the Children’s Home and other undertakings. We have initially been included among the 100 best local publications in Poland, and there is a real chance of entering the elite “Top Ten” financed by IDEE. Of course, provided that obliging “local patriots” do not put a stick in the spokes of the wheels of the cart we are laboriously pulling uphill.
For the Unia Wolności branch, the independent press means private publishers. For us, the adjective “independent” has a different meaning – it is the publication of 350 TMB members, not of a single owner. Let us stop deceiving and fooling ourselves; let us play fair. Support will be decided autonomously by councillors elected in individual electoral districts, so why this alarm and outcry directed at a few supposedly “independent” “friendly” editorial offices? Why was, for example, the independent “Gazeta Robotnicza” not approached about the matter? Such ugly manipulation under the banner of concern for local democracy does not become Unia Wolności… A dangerous and unnecessary political game has begun. Whatever its outcome, it will be bad for Bolesławiec local government.
What comes next in the local “war at the grassroots”? There will probably be an attack on the person serving as chair of the City Council, something that has long been discussed in so-called well-informed circles. Then probably the takeover, under exclusive “guardianship”, of the Local Municipal Television (here, RM subsidies somehow do not bother Unia Wolności), followed by criticism of the City Executive, which has already begun; from there, it is only a small step to a referendum and plebiscite, and thus to the election of “one’s own” councillors… I do not want to be a prophet, but among the fallen and bruised there may be many of today’s initiators of “reforms” and “revolutions”. The residents of Bolesławiec cannot be denied either discernment, wisdom or responsibility for their common fate. Unlike many crackpots, ideological orthodoxes, hurrah-revolutionaries, malcontents, extremists, destructive (not constructive) opposition figures and other “visionaries” (there are such people, oh yes there are – unfortunately). Is it not time to draw conclusions from the fact that in the town on the Bóbr, nearly 62% of voters supported the left-wing President of the Republic of Poland? And where does this hostility to pluralism, supposedly discovered by the right, come from? Why the contempt for the left and the silencing of people outside its ethos? What a strange democracy, seemingly straight out of the Stone Age, in keeping with the principles of Kali’s ethics… It is not my problem if the right shuts itself away in an open-air museum. In Portugal, a socialist became president and the world did not collapse. Spain has long forgotten the civil war. Meanwhile, alarm bells are ringing along the Vistula and the Bóbr. Well – such Sarmatian exoticism. In this atmosphere, in this fervour fuelled by newspapers and little papers sniffing out their own particular interests, there is no room for a free and independent press. I choose true freedom and voluntarily resign from the position of Editor-in-Chief. “I don’t have to, but I want to…”
Former Editor-in-Chief. Former Press Spokesperson for the City Executive
Paweł Śliwko