POLAND: The Polish government is planning to polish up the country's tarnished reputation abroad with a new office for the "protection and promotion of the image of Poland".
The appointment of a team of PR experts and a new commissioner is a tacit admission that Poland's standing has taken a hit since twins Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski took office as president and prime minister.
Their colourful remarks on everything from homosexuality to the death penalty may have returned Poland to the pages of the international press but have disproved the adage that there is no such thing as bad publicity.
A Polish diplomat suggested to the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper yesterday that the Kaczynski twins will make the new office "look like the communist-era office of propaganda".
"I'm quite sceptical about this. I think it is a damage-control effort that isn't really convincing," said Jakub Boratynski of the Batory Foundation think tank. "The problem is . . . what key people in Poland say publicly."
President Lech Kaczynski has been an eminently quotable head of state since taking office last year. He told a Berlin audience in March that it was dangerous to "encourage" homosexuality because "if they won the upper hand it would mean that mankind would die out". Last week he called for a debate on introducing the death penalty in Europe.
Relations with Berlin have deteriorated severely, reaching a low-point when Germany's left-wing Tageszeitung newspaper described the Kaczynski brothers as "Poland's new potatoes".
President Kaczynski cancelled a meeting with the German and French leaders at short notice, citing "digestion problems", while Polish ministers demanded that Berlin force an apology from the newspaper, which they compared to the Nazi-era Der Stürmer. Berlin replied that it didn't interfere in press matters and Tageszeitung apologised to the potato for comparing it to the Polish president.
Unnamed political observers told Gazeta Wyborcza yesterday good government policy, not PR, was key to Poland's good image. This image had been harmed of late by "stupidity and ignorance", said former foreign minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski.
The Kaczynski twins view the bad publicity as proof of a liberal elite-driven conspiracy against them. "In Poland there are many people who behave as if they are independent academics or journalists but they are in fact on the German payroll," Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said recently.