Stanislaw Kalemba new Polish agriculture min
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk accepted the coalition party’s candidate, Stanislaw Kalemba, for minister of agriculture Friday, July 27, 2012, following the resignation of the previous minister amidst accusations of nepotism.
“If the choice was mine,” Tusk told journalists, “it would be different. As it is our coalition partner is in charge of agriculture.”
The Polish People’s party (PSL) candidate Stanislaw Kalemba is a long-standing deputy head of the Parliamentary Agriculture Committee. He is considered a loyal PSL member and close to the PSL leader Waldemar Pawlak.
Kalemba’s son works in the State Agriculture Market Agency. Following his father’s accession to minister, he will be forced to resign.
The previous minister of agriculture, Marek Sawicki, resigned from his office on July 17, 2012 following the publication of a taped conversation between two of his subordinates in which they were recorded discussing nepotism, embezzlement of funds in agriculture projects and other irregularities connected with the minister’s political party PSL.
In the recordings, the ex-director of the Polish Agricultural Market Agency, as well as of the state agency implementing agricultural policy, Wladyslaw L., and the head of Polish Agriculture Communities, Wladyslaw Serafin, spoke of hiring and firing in the Polish Agency of Agriculture and discuss the exploits of their protégés in Elewarr, one of the agency’s company’s.
The State Prosecutor’s office has launched thorough investigations into the ministry to find the perpetrators of the “PSL Tape Affair.”
“To fight nepotism in the government, the prime minister should choose a new minister not from PSL,” Leszek Miller, leader of the socialist opposition party, SLD said before Tusk confirmed Kalemba as minister. “The People?s party likes to say, PSL will stay afloat,” Miller added, commenting the fate of Poland’s oldest political party. “Tusk may remove Sawicki now, but he will just be moved into the shadow for the time being to await a come-back.”
The prime minister, discontent with the choice of Kalemba, plans to clean the ministry of agriculture, by demanding the resignation of the two deputy ministers.
