[mrkaluzny]

The rapid and successful conversion to market economy was the main reason we are where we are. Human cost was extremely high, crime went up quickly and lots of money was lost. I'd argue this was corrected by joining EU and by adjusting the plan to polish reality.

What made it a success was also the social capital in Poland, a lot of people worked extremely hard to pull it off, but still high unemployment was alleviated only by joining EU and people leaving to find employment elsewhere

[goobatrooba]

Not to forget tens of billions in EU subsidies. Not trying to diminish the polish efforts, but not every country gets this opportunity of massive, predictable transfers without much conditionality.

I wonder how far Poland would be without the years of PiS corruption.

[wrzuteczka]

I think you got it backwards.

Over the last 20 years, the SLD govt used to literally sell new legislation for bribes, PO (currently in charge of Poland) literally has right now a guy in their ranks who has likely stolen 100s of millions PLN from a public company, but is the prime minister’s BFF so the prosecutor canceled the investigation. The stuff PiS has done is nothing compared to those.

I actually think that the Anti- Corruption Bureau that PiS founded is one of the core reasons Poland was able to mostly weed out the post-Russian corruption (corruption is unfortunately the main export of Russian culture, every country they invaded ended up extremely corrupt).

[rasz]

Yes. Piss is holier than holy and didnt run Justice Fund as its own private piggy bank stealing for PIS election campaigns and surveillance software to intercept PO politicians private communications. There is no reason whatsoever for former PIS prosecutor general last 7 months hiding in Hungary together with his co criminal deputy Marcin Romanowski who has been hiding there for almost two years. Former state-owned Oil giant Orlen CEO also spend some time hiding from prosecution in Hungary, what a coincidence.

Did we forget about pushing for illegal mail elections? Using state-owned companies filled with PIS politicians to finance bribes and promoting PIS? $25 billion pumped out straight to PIS coffers.

[wrzuteczka]

It’s still nothing compared to the other things I mentioned.

[rasz]

Nothin. Like selling (for bribes) Visas to Africans while simultaneously using same Africans to ferment anti immigration sentiment in its own electorate. Like selling huge amount of Orlen assets to Saudis (no doubt huge bribe). Covid respirators and masks scams, not to mention covid bribes. Koreans are also pretty famous for giving bribes and there has been a ton of shenanigans with military contracts including delaying 155mm production by two years because correct PIS people didnt get bribed https://wiadomosci.onet.pl/tylko-w-onecie/oni-sa-z-pis-a-wy-... Then we got Mariusz Kamiński and Maciej Wąsik $multi million land scandal. The list of PIS scheming is quite long.

[wrzuteczka]

The term "fake news" has been overused, but... we initially heard about hundreds of thousands of visas sold for bribes, now we know about maybe a couple hundred of visas issued with some - let's say - irregularities. No bribes found yet, even though it was the most high profile case in the country. So yeah.

Part of Orlen was sold to the Saudis to merge Orlen and Lotos (the exchange of gas stations with MOL was done for similar reasons) and to get better access to Saudi oil.

"Covid bribes" etc are probably mostly fake stories from Onet as well.