I listen to a personal commandment: Thou shalt not place thy trust onto any party that taketh not the word “party” inwith its name.
Sorry, but PSL is not a party (by name) ["S" stands for "stronnictwo"]. Neither is PO. Or PiS. Or SLD. Or LiD. Or UPR. Or UD. Or UP. Or KLD. Or SO. Or LPR. Or AWS. Or more. (You’d have to come to history for parties: PZPR, PPS, KPP.)

Second thing, true, there’s no middle class, Scatts, but things are funnier yet. There’s no capitalism in Poland. For where’s Poland’s capital? (And by “capital” I mean “Effing Big Capital” of course.)

Sounds like PSL need to be given a new toy and told to go play quietly in the corner. I really hate this electoral system. It’s good in theory but it so rarely works in practice as the dominant party is always spending too much time (i.e. more than zero) pandering to the weaker one.

Of course there’s a middle class. By Polish definitions (where it means upper upper middle class) it’s pretty small, but if you really want a country with no middle class then try the third world.

PSL may be political whores (and they are) but they’re also the current political party with the longest tradition and in some ways have the strongest connection to a big part of the electorate. According to my sources a big part of voters in the countryside switched from PiS to PSL during the last elections (going PO would have been too much and PSL was a way to register displeasure with PiS).

As for understanding their strategy, you could do worse than read James C. Scott’s “Weapons of the weak” (about rural rice farmers in 70′s Malaysia but with a much broader application).

It’s Groundhog Day.

I didn’t mean wrong wrong, but “so wrong” with :))

and I was mocking the usual style of our commentators…

doh!

Firstly, I suggest you write to the Warsaw Business Journal (see the link in red colour) and tell them how wrong they are.

Back to the post. So, they are, in English called the Polish Peasants Party and they do actually represent peasants. Not wrong there then.

The middle part is all from the article. See above re – writing to WBJ.

I don’t know (anything much about) these peasant people = true.

What the article means (if it is true), your opinion is as good as mine = neither true nor false. I happen to think there is no smoke without fire at times like this.

So that leaves us with a definition of “Middle Class”, which is also a matter of opinion.

So am I wrong, or you just have a different opinion to me?

PSL is Polska Partia Ludowa, which translates Polish People’s Party, but then people would wonder whether the party is supposed to be Polish or the people, so the name they use in English is Polish Peasant Party. And this is the oldest party in Polish mainstream politics, with history going back to 1895:)

Their chairman is an IT engineer :) They just represent the interest of peasant people. Quite well actually. You know peasant people don’t pay personal income tax, the one you had to struggle with filling the forms? They don’t pay for ZUS either. They have a much cheaper KRUS.

And about that quote. Is it trustworthy? Who said it? Who reported it? Will it mean anything (most likely no, besides PSL people wanting more media appearances).

There’s no middle class? That’s news. Class divisions are different than in Britain maybe, and the income line much lower. As I see it most people are middle class. Apart the total losers, and the top of the tops.