The May session of the Bolesławiec City Council had an exceptional character. For the first time in the city’s history, a resident exercised their statutory right to participate in the debate on the report on the state of the city, collecting more than 50 signatures of support and submitting the documents within the required deadline.

That resident was Krzysztof Gwizdała, a journalist with istotne.pl.

Despite meeting all the requirements set out in the city’s announcement, he was not allowed to speak. Council chair Łukasz Jaźwiec decided that the application did not meet the formal requirements. We already wrote about the details of this matter in a separate article titled What happened at the May City Council session, or how to slaughter local self-government in Bolesławiec.

They pounded istotne.pl like a drum; the Ceramics Festival took a back seat

During his speech, Mayor Piotr Roman invited Kornel Filipowicz, director of BOK–MCC, to speak about preparations for this year’s Ceramics Festival.

Residents could have expected information about the event’s programme, planned activities, concerts and the organisation of one of the city’s largest promotional events. It quickly became clear, however, that an important topic of the speech would also be the activities of the local istotne.pl portal.

The director referred to publications by the editorial team, criticised the way events were reported and assessed Krzysztof Gwizdała’s journalistic work. At certain moments, Mayor Piotr Roman actively participated in this part of the speech, recalling further threads and adding comments. One could get the impression that the most important event of the season would not be the city festival after all, but the online portal.

But that was not the end. Director Filipowicz invited Bogusław Nowak, one of the subcontractors for events organised during the Ceramics Festival, to the lectern. Nowak was supposed to talk about what he was planning for this year. It turned out differently. Nowak spoke at length about the history of the projects he had organised and about… Krzysztof Gwizdała. The councillors heard nothing about this year’s event programme, because Nowak began a verbal lynching of the journalist. Even the government-friendly Telewizja Bolesławiec did not quote him in full, because publishing Nowak’s words could have exposed it to a lawsuit.

Instead of residents’ voices, the “mayor’s craziness”

The atmosphere at the session was tense. The residents’ voice was ignored, none of the councillors dared to oppose the mayor, who dominated the session, and the council chair did not even pretend that he wanted to take control of what was happening.

The culmination of this anti-democratic situation was the mayor’s comment—or rather, complaint. Krzysztof Gwizdała was sitting in the public gallery and talking to the person next to him. During the conversation, he gestured.

The mayor did not like it. Piotr Roman interrupted the proceedings and addressed the chair of the city council.

“A moment ago, Mr. Gwizdała showed that I’m nuts,” the mayor said.

Łukasz Jaźwiec initially did not react. After a moment, however, at the mayor’s request, he announced a recess.

The whole situation would be merely a funny anecdote if not for the broader context. The resident who had collected the required signatures and wanted to speak in the debate on the report on the state of the city was not allowed to participate in that debate. At the same time, the session included plenty of time for a wide-ranging discussion about the local portal and its editor.

As a result, the most important question after the proceedings ended was not “What does the report on the state of the city tell us?” but rather: “Why did the mayor decide that someone was showing that he was nuts?”