On Tuesday, Poland's national-conservative governing party PiS launched a draft law on a "Council for Strategic Security".
In the case of state-related and systemically important corporations, essentially from the energy sector, this body should be given the right of veto for years to come over who sits on the board and who is dismissed.
Gerhard Gnauck
Political correspondent for Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania based in Warsaw.
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A PiS minister said it was important to prevent "predations by those in power" on top posts.
A PiS MP argued that if the then-government's plans to build a Baltic Sea pipeline to Norway's gas fields hadn't been scrapped after 2001 by the next pro-Russian government, Poland would have built that "Baltic Pipe" back then - and not only now.
In the “Council” the PiS should have an overwhelming majority.
The PiS-related managers now employed in the companies could remain in their posts for years.
Critics called the draft a "feeding trough law" intended to "concrete" the ruling party's sinecure.
At the same time, it became abundantly clear that the PiS, which has been in power since 2015, is anticipating the possibility of losing the parliamentary elections next autumn.
On the same day, the national-conservative governing party withdrew the bill again – because of “constitutional concerns”.
Bürer in the survey three percent ahead of the PiS
There is no denying that the government is facing difficult times.
On the one hand, she gets a lot of praise for her role in helping Ukraine in the western world.
But that's hardly going to make up for the fact that the country is struggling with 15.7 percent inflation and struggling to fuel coal-fired homes ahead of winter.
In addition, there is the ongoing conflict with Brussels over the rule of law, which has already led to the payment of EU-wide Corona reconstruction aid for Poland being blocked and the blocking of further EU billions threatening.
A survey conducted in mid-October for the anti-government broadcaster TVN24 gave the opposition the best result in years.
The Civic Platform (PO) would get 31 percent of the votes.
The PiS ended up in second place for the first time with 28 percent.
The third and fourth largest parties would only be conceivable as coalition partners for the PO.
Their boss Donald Tusk cheered at an event in the province on Monday: "What seemed unthinkable a year ago is now within reach.
We're really going to win these elections.
I'm not crazy.” The survey, conducted by a rather pro-government institute, also produced the historically worst results for Mateusz Morawiecki's government: only 26 percent of those surveyed counted themselves among its supporters, 47 percent among its opponents;
23 percent said they were “indifferent”.
The nervousness of the PiS camp can be seen in other legislative proposals.
A draft was passed in the first reading, which is to postpone the local elections, which, like the parliamentary elections, should take place in a year, by six months.
PiS politicians argued that holding all elections smoothly at the same time would be organizationally risky.
Critics, such as former civil rights commissioner Adam Bodnar, see the plan as "solely a means of maintaining power."
The opposition parties are particularly good at mobilizing voters in local elections, and the PiS apparently fears that if they are held at the same time, this could “rub off” the results of the parliamentary elections.
A draft has been in parliament since last week that is intended to retrospectively exempt the local authorities who helped prepare the controversial postal vote of the President in 2020.
At that time, the government camp wanted to push through the re-election of the popular President Andrzej Duda in a timely manner, but because of the first corona wave that was currently rolling, they switched the procedure to an (exclusive) postal vote, which the state post office was supposed to direct.
The fact that municipalities handed out the voter lists to the post office was probably illegal.