Is AWPL starting to prepare for the election?

How do you know that the elections are approaching? The politicians  start to imitate the turbulent activity. This applies to all politicians, including, of course, Polish ones.

AWPL fraction registered in the Sejm’s office one another (next to the projects of Jarosław Narkiewicz and Rita Tamašūnienė)  Act on National Minorities. As known, Jarosław Narkiewicz’s project, which will be considered in the autumn session of the Lithuanian Parliament in the third and final reading, was in July last year “corrected” by the “exotic” parliamentary majority, who combined opposition with the coalition government that as a result there remained, in principle, only a novelty – the possibility to use in contacts with the state administration and self-government  the native language, not only in the complaints and  written applications (this is allowed and according to the  applicable laws), but also in oral forms. By the way, on the contrary to what the media claim the project did not solve the problem of bilingual plates with the names of streets and towns.

Jarosław Narkiewicz’s project only brought back the Act on National Minorities, which had expired four years ago. The Supreme Administrative Court in September 2009 (ie in the time of the validity of the Act) acknowledged that it does not allow for bilingual street or town names and noted that, in accordance with the Act on the State Language all public notices in Lithuania must be written in the Lithuanian language and the use of minority languages ​​is permitted only in the names of national minorities’ organizations and their information notices. At the same time NSA emphasized in its statement, that the article of the Law on National Minorities permitting the notice information in the language of a national minority, has the character which is “general and platform, but it completely does not detalize the way and is guided by the criteria of how such notices post”. Therefore, in this case we should refer to the rules that determine the mode, ie to the Act on the state language, which gives the right to use information notices in the language of a national minority only to the organizations of national minorities.

In this aspect, the new project of the Law on National Minorities, which is basically a copy of the project prepared by the former Deputy Minister of Culture acting on behalf of AWPL Edward Trusewicz (in fact it was prepared during the time of the reign of the previous liberal-conservative coalition by the Deputy Minister Stanisław Widtmanna and the Deputy Minister Edward Trusewicz it only significantly improved) is much better. There is no lack of all sorts of empty declarations and repetition of existing articles and legal texts in force (concerning the possibility of association, believing in religion, the prohibition of discrimination), but it also has a few specifics. The most important is the right of national minorities to communicate with the authorities and local and public governments in their native language, and the right to bilingual street, town, topographical signs and public institutions names. Both of these rights are supposed to be provided in local government, in which representatives of the national minorities constitute not less than 10 percent of the total inhabitants.

Pros and cons of a new project  

As known Edward Trusewicz’s project, which improved version is currently presented by the fraction AWPL, earlier stuck in government working groups and meetings, not mentioning quite obvious lack of courage of political rulers from two formal reasons.

Firstly, it predicted such amounts of people delegating as the members to the Council of National Minorities that it favored the Poles and the Russians, and at the same time tried to convince the less numerous ethnic minorities (such proposals led to the fact that all of that few national minorities, who usually consist of immigrants, have opted against the project and gave an opportunity to project opponents to talk about discrimination of “small nations”). This drawback in the project AWPL had fixed in the manner of Solomon – in general a new project does not regulate the election of the representatives to the Council of National Minorities.

Secondly, a sharp dispute started to determine in which of the local governments the bilingualism is going to be applied. Many people in the coalition government – the Social Democrats, the representatives of the Labour Party – are reported to propose that bilingualism should apply only to the towns in which minorities consist of no less than third part of inhabitants and according to AWPL of 25 percent. Currently the AWPL’s project was further lowered by 15 percent and if the law was accepted it would be – apart from the Czech Republic – the most liberal solution in Europe. Anyone who knows the Lithuanian reality, knows that this is impossible. We are famous for the many wonderful things: cheese, honey, kindziuk and basketball players, but certainly not from the liberal attitude toward minorities. So maybe  the 10-percent threshold is only a bargaining cart. The problem is that no one from the AWPL will be bargaining for these percentages in the project.

Do we  still believe in the charge of the Light Brigade?

In the time of the Crimean campaign, October 25, 1854 at Balaklava the light brigade of British cavalry carried out the greatest and bloodiest charge in the history of wars. Several hundred horsemen armed with swords and lances thrown themselves directly toward the  Russian canon. The bold attack of the Light Brigade ended with the massacre: Russian bullets and grenades decimated the British soldiers … The Act on National Minorities also cannot be carried out using tha tactic “charge of the Light Brigade”. For doing it is needed relentless, laborious, unnoticeable lobbying work and the creation of informal coalitions of the MPs from different factions in favor of such project (so far the best in it are the enemies of national minorities). Unfortunately, such lobbying work needs a political experience which we have been lacking for 25 years. We cannot lay the blame on the proverbial Lithuanians’ polonophobia, many national minorities were gaining laws for themselves in much more unfavorable conditions than the Lithuanian ones.

Therefore, the project will likely be rejected at the first reading, because the Sejm lawyers will probably challenge the constitutionality of it (the state doctrine of the status of the Lithuanian language, formed by the Constitutional Court is so strict that you can – with “good” intentions –with its help destroy each project on the rights of national minorities. AWPL does not have in the Sejm Committee of Law and Order a sufficient majority to reject the requested application). And even if the issue of anticonstitutionality was not raised the project of Law on National Minorities is contrary to the Act on the state language. What is more, the MPs of AWPL did not report the amendments to the project …

That why I am not able to treat the new initiative legislative of Polish deputies different than a piarowski’s trick for the benefit of  the upcoming local government campaign. Rejection of the project will once again make it possible to introduce themselves as those who want to be good but are victims of Lithuanian parliamentarians’ polonophobia. And there is no doubt that such polonofobia exists in many Lithuanian deputies. But it is worth considering whether our representatives did everything they could to eradicate it, or the opposite – they did everything to deepen it, believing that any issue can be solved with the solution of “the Charge of the Light Brigade”? …