“The use of lies is so in the blood of the opposition that they no longer care what the Poles think of this situation, how they judge it. Honesty doesn’t matter to them. This is to show that we are on two completely opposite sides,” Elżbieta Rafalska, former minister of the Family, Labor and Social Policy, told the wPolityce.pl portal.
wPolityce.pl: “In front of you is the biggest hypocrite of Polish politics” – this is how Law and Justice characterized the leader of PO Donald Tusk, who presented a new social media post, this time about the early retirement of the former prime minister. How does the Minister view this situation, particularly in the context of the retirement age decision taken by Donald Tusk’s government in 2011, contrary to election declarations?
Elizabeth Rafalska: Donald Tusk has already completely compromised himself. This is already a complete loss of credibility, which he never had anyway. The great reformer of the pension system, who argued with a group of experts that the system would not last if the retirement age were not extended, therefore he would equalize the age and extend it by seven years for women and two years for men, eagerly benefited of this lowered, restored retirement age.
He got really ridiculous. He has also shown that he doesn’t even want to keep up appearances.
On the one hand, I am glad that this case has seen the light of day. We can also take a step reminiscent of the recovery of the retirement age and how Law and Justice dealt with this social aspect of the retirement age that virtually all women who decide to retire at age 60, and men – age 65 , also make these decisions thanks to our regulation – restoring the retirement age, because some people have already forgotten about it.
If that system were still in place, women would have to be employed for 25 years before the minimum retirement age. Otherwise, they would receive much lower benefits, namely 800,000 Poles who now receive a pension and work will no longer be able to use it, because most of them will retire after the age of 67.
Donald Tusk outsmarted the whole situation – after all, he would have done just fine without receiving this benefit. For him, credibility and reliability mean nothing. The use of lies is so in the blood of the opposition that they no longer care what the Poles think of this situation, how they judge it.
Honesty doesn’t matter to them. This is to show that we are on two completely opposite sides.
Yesterday, during his visit to Silesia, Donald Tusk made another interesting statement – he stated that he wanted to extract Polish coal and that this was not contrary to the energy transformation. However, he himself claimed in 2019 that we should move away from coal as soon as possible, because delaying the energy transformation causes “the death of thousands of Polish children from smog”.
Donald Tusk’s daring is absolutely limitless. I have just come to Silesia, which is treated by opposition politicians, as we know very well. The fact that miners were injured during the 2015 JSW pot protests was called into question due to police brutality, and today there are again attempts to tell some lies, completely contrary to what Donald Tusk pursued when his party was in power in Poland.
Today such statements can be described as another “pear in the sky”. On the one hand, it is an attempt to constantly frighten the Poles, on the other, an attempt to lie.
This is a totally wrong way. Tusk will probably run out of ideas for more lies soon. The Poles are already very tired of his fighting and starting more wars. Difficult times call for compromise and an attempt at agreement, and for the election campaign he chose a different option. I feel like it’s leading him astray, which I’m not really worried about.
Former Prime Minister Beata Szydło also said in an interview to be published tomorrow in the last issue of Tygodnik “Sieci” that it is difficult to find credibility in Donald Tusk, including in terms of social programs. Prime Minister Szydlo asked a rhetorical question: “Would anyone want to take a risk, play this lottery?”. Can it also be the same with social programs as it used to be with the retirement age?
All the crises that happened during the PO and PSL governments were always paid for by limiting social policy spending. Always. It was the first cut. Now, under any pretext, there will certainly be a withdrawal from all, in my opinion, social investments carried out by the Law and Justice government.
I’m not even talking about the flagship Family 500 Plus program, which despite its many benefits has the biggest “flaw” in the eyes of the Law and Justice opposition. However, I have the impression that today the 500 Plus program is also a symbol that the election program announced in the campaign can be implemented. It was the first major project to help build the credibility, accountability and reliability of Law and Justice.
The opposition is well aware of this and will therefore probably not want to carry our banners. It is therefore to be expected that the social charges would certainly go under the knife under the pretext of a difficult situation or expenditure for other purposes. This is an area in which the opposition has never been particularly interested and has always been marginalized and forgotten. There was more focus on whether it could make developers big money or boost other areas, but certainly not social programs.
Another very big concern I hear in rallies with voters is whether the state of public finances will not return to the state PiS found in 2015, when it took power after the PO. Won’t the VAT gap grow back to 20-30 percent, and if the money leaks out, they’ll stop telling us “we don’t have the money to run the programs”, and the money will be credited to the accounts of some privileged groups.
All the more so because PO experts, from whom the opposition always ostentatiously distances itself, have already spoken openly about the privatization of Polish companies, the liquidation or limitation of social programs, and we heard from PO politicians that the 13th and 14th pensions ” few pieces”. How do you interpret these disturbing statements and the fact that the Platform is so eager to cut itself off from them later on?
I think they – experts included – sometimes tell the truth by mistake, not just defraud voters. They sometimes say what they really think about the extra support: that it is “scratching” or “political corruption” or that the money means nothing to people.
This shows, firstly, that they will certainly not support the continuation of these programs, and secondly, that they are completely detached from people, do not understand their real situation and do not know that for a pensioner even such a one-time support with the amount of the lowest pension really weighs a lot.
That does not bode well for a fair social policy. It happens differently, because some experts are moving away a little bit today, or Civic Platform is moving away from experts who said, for example, that raising the minimum wage would increase the shadow economy, that unemployment would increase, etc. Nothing like that happened, so for campaign purposes you have to retreat from some theories, opinions and opinions of experts.
Anyway, I don’t want to cite the expert opinions when the childcare allowance was introduced and the family policy was built. This was to devastate, destroy public finances, increase and deactivate unemployment. Show me these experts today and what their assessments are today how wrong they were. Or – since we are talking about retirement age – what is the state of affairs at the Social Insurance Fund. The so-called funding ratio in FUS today is 80 percent. and is the highest in history, despite the restored retirement age.
These expert opinions completely deviated from reality, because they were prepared for political needs, to justify misguided and unjust reforms. Also for a political lie, namely the extension of the retirement age, despite the fact that Donald Tusk had previously assured that his government would not make such a decision. Today we can see that he ordered the Poles to work longer, and now he has decided that he does not have to work as long as in his reform. So he first deceived the Poles and then put himself in a privileged position.
Thank you very much for the interview.
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– Tusk wants to extract Polish coal? This is what he said in 2019! In the new issue of “Sieci”, Beata Szydło points out the lies of the PO leader!
-Miserable! Miners were shot at during PO rule, now Tusk is trying to flatter them: “We want to extract Polish coal”
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Source: wPolityce