On one tape head of central bank Marek Belka is overheard discussing with interior minister Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz in unparliamentary and robust language the removal of another minister and ways to pressurise a private businessman. Both claim they were quoted correctly, but out of context. On another tape, another minister, since no longer in the government, assures a former senior official that he has personally "blocked" an investigation into the latter's wife's tax affairs.
Poland is agog. The tapes, and more to come, were secretly recorded over several months by persons unknown at a restaurant that had been known as a discreet place to meet. They were published by the weekly paper Wprost to the mortification of an irate government. Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who on Monday described the taping as "an attempt at a coup d'etat, bringing down the Polish government by illegal means", yesterday, still in shoot-the-messenger mode, warned that the affair may force him to call a general election.
He has refused to sack interior minister Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz, who, prosecutors agree, did not break the law (although his colleague almost certainly did). And Tusk has insisted that those responsible for the taping should be charged and that Wprost should not publish further recordings. The paper promises to do so again on Monday.
Tusk’s embarrassment has been compounded by a clumsy and heavy-handed night raid by “independent”state prosecutors on the paper’s offices to seize computers and tapes and by Twitter photos afterwards showing editor Sylwester Latkowski wrestling with officials over a laptop. In the end they left empty-handed, but provoking a storm of protest about threats to press freedom.
All grist to the mill of conservative opposition Law and Justice Party, currently ahead in the polls and who have demanded the government’s resignation, and hardly the way for democratic Poland to celebrate 25 years this week since its first free elections after communism.