-- SATURDAY SHOWDOWN OF CONVENTIONS - LIVE REPORT ON 300POLITYCE: https://300polityka.pl/live/2019/04/06/

-- PIS WINS SEATS - PARR'S ANALYSIS FOR ONET BASED ON AVAILABLE POLLS: The distribution of seats may look like this: PiS – 24, European Coalition – 21, Wiosna – 4, Kukiz’15 – 3. https://wiadomosci.onet.pl/tylko-w-onecie/multisondaz-prognoza-wynikow-wyborow-do-pe/stp7s45

-- WAS CZAPUTOWA'S VICTORY DUE TO FOCUSING ON THE ENVIRONMENT? - BIZNES ALERT: “After the journalist's death, Czaputova appeared authentic to the citizens of Slovakia in her statements and behavior. The presidential candidate spoke a lot about environmental protection, which was one of the three pillars of her program, alongside slogans like ‘fair state’ and ‘dignity for seniors’. As a lawyer educated at Comenius University in Bratislava, she has been dealing with environmental protection law matters since the beginning of her professional career.” http://biznesalert.pl/zuzanna-czaputova-srodowisko-ekologia-oze-energetyka/

-- KRZYSZTOF ŁAPIŃSKI SAYS THE FATE WILL BE DECIDED BY THE SMALLER PARTIES - in an interview with Łukasz Rogojsz on Gazeta.pl: “I would be looking not only at what is happening in the two main camps, but also in the other parties. We can almost take it for granted that no one will govern alone in the autumn. It happened once, and I don't think it will happen again soon. That's why the question arises about how the smaller groupings will fare – Biedroń's Wiosna, Kukiz'15, Konfederacja. These are all potential coalition partners in the autumn for the two main players. Although the price of such an alliance will certainly be very high.”

-- FOR ME, FORMER PRIME MINISTERS SAY A LOT, THE QUESTION IS WHETHER THE VOTERS DO - ŁAPIŃSKI CONTINUES: “This is the key issue. You probably know the football saying that names don't play. A player for 75 million euros can perform worse in a match than one for 5 million. Names are certainly very strong, but that doesn't mean they will also perform excellently in the electoral fight. Fielding former prime ministers is a general European practice, especially in European elections. It is a natural course of events that someone who has held such high office is perceived as a very experienced person who will be useful in Brussels. For me, the trio Belka – Miller – Cimoszewicz, i.e., three former heads of government, says a lot. But I've been deeply interested in politics for years. What's more important is how they are perceived and evaluated by the young electorate and people who entered adulthood after they held their positions. http://wiadomosci.gazeta.pl/wiadomosci/7,114884,24622119,dla-schetyny-i-opozycji-to-gra-o-wszystko-rozmowa-z-krzysztofem.html

-- THE GOAL WAS TO STIFLE WIOSNA - PIOTR ZAREMBA IN RZ: “One can assume that Rafał Trzaskowski simply decided to fulfill one of his election promises, and he was thinking in terms of Warsaw, not the whole of Poland. Added to this was the determination of the openly gay deputy mayor Paweł Rabiej from Nowoczesna. But one can argue otherwise: for Grzegorz Schetyna, the priority was to stifle Wiosna. Thus, it was about shifting to the left, the possibility of holding the right accountable to the canons of Europeanism.”

-- IF THIS WAS PREMEDITATION BY THE PO LEADERSHIP, THE CONSEQUENCES ARE MEDIOCRE - ZAREMBA CONTINUES: “If we are dealing with premeditation by the PO leadership, then the consequences are, to put it mildly, mediocre. And the famous ‘WHO standards’ from the LGBT declaration, especially Rabiej's statement about homosexual couples adopting children in the future, have pushed the European Coalition into overly extremist positions. It is possible that for Schetyna, stifling Wiosna was as important as winning the election. Although if the KE loses by a few percent to PiS, one can ask whether a strategy that was too risky was not chosen.”

-- THE IMPRESSION OF DEFENDING THE COMMON SENSE STATUS QUO RATHER SERVES THE RIGHT - ZAREMBA CONTINUES IN RZ: “In this situation, PiS didn't have to do much, relying on playing with impressions. Even if some of Jarosław Kaczyński's statements, and especially the messages from his propaganda apparatus, sound brutal in the debate over LGBT, the impression of defending the common sense status quo rather serves the right. Especially since even if we pick out individual, often repulsive cases of verbal obscurantism from PiS members, this party as a political machine was far from fundamentalism. To recall the four-year freeze in parliament on the legalization of eugenic abortion. No one could force Kaczyński to do it, not even the Episcopate, which also avoided putting the issue on the line.” https://www.rp.pl/Plus-Minus/304059978-PiS-LGBT-europejskie-klimaty.html

-- A MORE TERRIBLE TRAGEDY IS THE ULTIMATE MURDER OF THE COMMUNITY - MICHAŁ SZUŁDRZYŃSKI IN RZ BEFORE THE 9TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SMOLENSK CATASTROPHE: “In the following months, however, there was – who knows, perhaps even more terrible from the perspective of the state – a tragedy consisting of the murder of the Polish Community, the ultimate and deep disintegration of Poland into two hating tribes.”

-- BLACKMAIL FROM BOTH SIDES - SZUŁDRZYŃSKI CONTINUES: “For we allowed ourselves to be blackmailed by both sides. One side claimed from the beginning that a crime had occurred because a Polish president had been murdered on Russian territory, so not only must the truth be found, but above all, those in power at the time – led by Donald Tusk – must be held accountable for their more or less conscious participation in the conspiracy against the lives of the passengers of the flight to Smolensk.”

-- THE SITUATION IN 2010 OVERWHELMED TUSK - SZUŁDRZYŃSKI CONTINUES: “Great responsibility falls on those who held the reins of power at the time, because they are the ones who have the tools to act appropriately. The problem is that the situation completely overwhelmed Donald Tusk, who probably did not appreciate the seriousness of the events, nor that any of his decisions would have colossal consequences later. The then-Prime Minister decided that organizing beautiful funeral ceremonies would be enough to meet the requirement of decency.”

-- THE PLATFORM'S MISTAKE WAS TAKING ALL POSITIONS AFTER SMOLENSK; PERHAPS THE 2015 PURGES STEMMED FROM THAT TRAUMA - SZUŁDRZYŃSKI CONTINUES: “What's more, in the following days, Civic Platform made another terrible mistake: they didn't think to share the positions that became vacant as a result of the deaths of the PiS delegation members. Tusk lacked the imagination to decide to give one of the important offices to the then-opposition. Admittedly, the constitution required presidential elections within three months, but there was nothing in it that said all positions should be filled with their own people. As a result, the other side considered that Platforma was the beneficiary of this catastrophe – it took over the office of president, ombudsman, president of the National Bank of Poland, and then subsequent offices that were filled thanks to gaining such an advantage. Perhaps the zeal with which PiS purged all offices after its victory in 2015 was a reaction to that very Smoleńsk trauma, which contributed to such deep divisions.”

-- IT WAS MACIEREWICZ WHO BETRAYED THOSE WHOM KACZYŃSKI PROMISED THE TRUTH - SZUŁDRZYŃSKI CONTINUES: “Nevertheless, Macierewicz, that extraordinary politician, failed the greatest test he faced – after PiS's victory, he became Minister of National Defense and filled the State Commission for Aircraft Accident Investigation with his people, but for four years, apart from showing the errors and omissions of Tusk's team, it did not significantly change our knowledge of the disaster. And it was Macierewicz who betrayed all those to whom Jarosław Kaczyński had promised the truth about Smolensk.” https://www.rp.pl/Plus-Minus/304059982-Druga-tragedia-smolenska-wciaz-zbiera-zniwo.html

-- KACPER PŁAŻYŃSKI REVEALS HOW HIS FATHER SPOKE ABOUT TUSK - in an interview with Piotr Witwicki in RZ: “In my home, public affairs were discussed a lot, and in this context, also due to my father's positions, about Donald Tusk. My father always chose his words carefully, especially when evaluating other people, which he did very rarely. That's why his assessment of Donald Tusk, when he simply called him a Machiavellian, stuck with me very strongly. Today, such a formulation said publicly would pass without any echo, but at the time it made a big impression on me.” https://www.rp.pl/Rozmowy-Witwickiego/304059981-Kacper-Plazynski-Dulkiewicz-juz-wybrala-Tuska-na-swego-patrona.html

-- MINISTER CHEATS ON SMOG - Dominika Wantuch in GW: “- The minister made a fool of us – say experts who worked for half a year to establish new smog warning thresholds. Environment Minister Henryk Kowalczyk announced them himself: they remain the highest in Europe and completely different from specialists' recommendations.” http://wyborcza.pl/7,75398,24621963,nie-ma-alarmu-nie-ma-problemu-minister-srodowiska-ukrywa-smog.html

-- ELECTION YEAR LIKE A STATE OF EMERGENCY - MARCIN FIJOŁEK: “The faltering investments, which were supposed to be the engine of Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki's plan, and which have not reached the level set by the head of government, are indeed a topic that should be addressed – and very quickly. Here, however, we return to the starting point, i.e., to the logic of an election year, which introduces a kind of state of emergency into political life. Characteristically, almost all opposition politicians also play within the framework of this aforementioned state. The closer we get to the elections (especially the autumn ones), the more we will feel the effects of this exceptionality; another example is the juggling of finances from the government campaign, which the government has the right to do, and the party campaign, but let's leave that topic for other considerations.”

-- WILL THE AUTHORITIES BE ABLE TO MOVE AWAY FROM A LOGIC THAT DOES NOT REQUIRE CRITICAL REFLECTION ON THE COMPLEXITY OF THE WORLD? - FIJOŁEK'S CONCLUSION: “The permanent tension between the ‘exceptionality’ of the pre-election period and strategic, long-term thinking is naturally embedded in the functioning of any government. This is also evident in the actions of the Morawiecki government and the prime minister himself. The open question is whether the authorities in the autumn, regardless of who will be in power, will be able to smoothly transition to a different logic, since this campaign logic works so well and does not require critical reflection on the complexity of the world we live in.” https://wpolityce.pl/m/polityka/441278-logika-roku-wyborczego-czyli-maly-stan-wyjatko

-- ACCORDING TO MONEY.PL, NO ONE IN AUSTRIA HAS HEARD OF BIRGELLNER: “Gerald Birgfellner has been in the headlines in Poland for a long time. But what about Austria? Journalists know little about him there and are not familiar with his business achievements. The entrepreneur himself does not help them either – his company does not even have a website. And isn't it surprising that a businessman from Austria agrees to work in Poland for a year without receiving regular salary and even without signing a detailed contract? - Oh yes, that is strange. Very strange indeed - I hear from an editor.” https://www.money.pl/gospodarka/tasmy-kaczynskiego-gerald-birg-jak-w-wiedniu-malo-kto-slyszal-o-biznesmenie-od-wiez-srebrnej-6366749247490178a.html

-- THE AUSTRIAN'S GROTESQUE: IF PIS ACTED LIKE BIRGFELLNER SAYS, THEY WOULD HAVE CEASED TO EXIST LONG AGO - JACEK KARNOWSKI: “Can you imagine that, ladies and gentlemen? A phone call asking to 'bring money from the bank' – in an era of easily accessible wiretaps, in an era when perhaps half of all phones have an application that automatically records all conversations? If such direct orders were issued from Nowogrodzka via telephone, PiS would have ceased to exist long ago. Because the party's history is not short of dramatic breakups, schisms, and betrayals. If the PiS headquarters operated in such a brazen and direct manner, it would quickly bring about its own downfall.” https://wpolityce.pl/m/polityka/441270-relacja-birgfellnera-w-jednym-punkcie-jest-wrecz-groteskowa

-- MICHAŁ MATLAK IN KULTURA LIBERALNA ASKS IF THIS IS A WATERSHED MOMENT FOR THE POLISH CHURCH AND CATHOLICISM IN POLAND: “In fact, there is no longer a country in Europe where the Church plays such an important role. Will the crisis surrounding pedophilia and social polarization lead to the end of Catholic Poland? The percentage of believers in Poland has been steadily declining for years, but hard data do not indicate a widespread process of secularization of Polish society. This could, however, change quickly – Ireland is an example of a once very Catholic country that has become a secular state within a decade. Similarly, rapid secularization occurred in Western Europe in the late 1960s and early 1970s in Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium. Underlying, decades-long social processes, at a certain point, took the form of real change.” https://kulturaliberalna.pl/2019/04/05/matlak-polska-katolicyzm-sekularyzacja/

-- BIRTHDAYS: Maria Zuba, SUNDAY: Mirella Panek-Owsiańska, Grzegorz Furgo, Wiesław Janczyk.