Last Sunday Poland chose new president, 43 years old Andrzej Duda, who was unknown to Poles six months ago.
But with the support of the main opposition party he did win. The third in the race was a rock star Pawel Kukiz. Two weeks later, Kukiz shows up in ranking and the most trustworthy politician and his new party comes second in opinion polls, PiS with 36 percent, Kukiz with 25 percent, ahead of ruling PO with 20 percent.
During the first two years of PO ruling I believed they wanted to change the country for the better. I advised four ministers in PO government and coauthored many strategic documents. But it was all fake, PO leadership did not care. I soon understood that there will be no real reforms, that it is only about the power and nepotism. I wrote more than 200 articles in Polish newspapers and one book warning about PO government, including the worst finance minister in the history of Poland, you know who. Nobody listened, or very few. Then the tapes came out and people found out the real face of PO. And finally, the nation woke up and gave PO the thumbs down.
Of course PO will fight, they are scared that the truth about Smolensk will see the daylight, as five members of the ZEN wrote in the article in Rzeczpospolita in the first anniversary of the tragedy.
But it is the past. Hopefully villains will be prosecuted and punished. But the more important is the future. Every change begins with hope, that new elites will create new, powerful vision of Poland, that meets the aspirations of the nation. PiS has managed to create a strong group of experts, many of them young, well educated, who have been discussing the future of Poland in the past few years and designing new reform, under the brand Polska Wielki Projekt. So ideas are ready, team is prepared. As we all know the most important year is 2016, first year after elections. Later, starting from 2018 demographic tsunami will hit Poland hard, so reforms will have to be fast and well designed.
Lets hope the new elites after winning 2015 presidential and general elections will use their window of opportunity wisely. Polish nation should no longer hear the PO narrative that our biggest chance are handouts from Brussels. Our biggest strength should be powerful vision and leadership, our talent, our entrepreneurship DNA developed in the past 500 years and our resolve to become the great nation that we once were.
The time has come. Now or never.
Krzysztof Rybiński
Economy of the XXI century - https://www.mpolska24.pl/blog/economy-of-the-xxi-century
Professor Krzysztof Rybinski holds MA in computer sciences, and Ph.D. in economics. He has an extensive professional background. He worked as software engineer in Tokyo, director of the Soros Foundation programs in CEE, a consultant to the World Bank. He was chief economist and managing director at commercial banks. In 2004, he was appointed the Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Poland by the President of Poland and performed this function for four years until 2008. He was in charge of research, foreign exchange reserves management, payment systems, cash circulation management, monetary statistics and international relations. Under his supervision National Bank of Poland changed its investment strategy which resulted in additional one billion dollars profit for Poland. In 2004-2005, he was member of the EU Economic and Financial Committee, and in 2007-2008 a member of the Polish Financial Services Authority. In 2007-2008 he served as a World Bank alternate governor for Poland. He was also member of the supervisory boards of several financial sector companies (2008-2009) and Partner in Ernst & Young Poland (2008-2010). Since 2010, he has been Professor and President of Vistula University in Warsaw, which offers education to students from more than 30 countries. In 2012 he launched the investment fund called EUROGEDDON, its investment strategy assumes deepening financial crisis in the Eurozone. The fund launch was covered by Financial Times and CNN International.
Krzysztof Rybinski was economic advisor to several Polish governments. In the last few years he was a coauthor of country higher education strategy, e-government strategy and intellectual capital strategy.
Krzysztof Rybinski is author of numerous refereed papers in economics and (co) author of several books. In March 2012 ranking he was ranked the fourth best Polish economist by number of scientific citations. In October 2012 he received the business award of most respected Polish economist. He has also contributed hundreds of articles on economics and financial markets to Polish newspapers. He published in The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and The Economist. He was the first senior central banker in the world to have started a popular and often quoted by media economic blog www.rybinski.eu already in 2006.
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