Poland's Purge

Poland has been fighting for years to purge their government from former communists and they have taken an even bigger step:

Poland’s voters have booted their left-leaning government from power after four years marked by scandal and infighting. Can a coalition of conservative, broadly pro-market parties led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski do any better?

ANOTHER election, another trouncing for the ruling party. Poland has had ten prime ministers since the country ditched communism in 1989, and it is about to get an eleventh. In the vote held on Sunday September 25th—the first since the country joined the European Union in May 2004—the rehabilitated communists who have run Poland for the past four years were given a massive thumbs-down by the electorate. Not for the first time, voters have put their faith in right-of-centre parties promising to give the country more economic oomph without sacrificing social stability.

The very thought of "social stability" is a cultural canard. The well-intentioned cushion that socialism provides in reality has many problems: sacrificing equality of opportunity for equality of results ends with people getting neither.

In order to implement true reforms, Polish politicians must communicate to the public that a thriving econonomy cannot be tied down by cinder-blocks of central control. History has shown that money + centrally planned government = corruption. The more privatization that occurrs, the faster Poland will be able to root out the corruption that continues to plague their government.

This does not mean pure laze faire, but a market economy that puts the means of production in the hands of its people, instead of the government, while legislating rules that protect citizens and consumers from unfair business practices.

Poland can look to the U.S. and U.K. and then compare their economic ideologies to those of France and Germany. It may be too late for Old Europe, but Poland has the opportunity to drive some real change. Unfortunately, it isn't just a matter of changing government--they need to change their culture.