Steve Sibbald's Column
Saturday 7th July, 2012
Each week the NPE team scours the Polish press looking for the main stories and it’s fair to say that many of the articles pick themselves.
However, over the last few editions there’s been an abundance of stories and we’ve had a tough time choosing what to include and what to leave out. It’s almost as if now the football fest is done and dusted, the media’s got a huge backlog of stories it just can’t wait to thrust upon us.
A perfect example is this week’s rather sinister news about 26-year-old Robert F. who is set to appear in court in a few weeks for apparently “insulting the president”.
The case is by no means new and revolves around the man’s website antykomor.pl which has been online for a while and gets its kicks by poking fun at Mr Komorowski.
A couple of months ago Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW) raided the man’s home, and seized his computers as evidence. The president has since stated that he had no prior knowledge of the raid and one of his advisors has even pointed out that Mr Komorowski was one of those who hit the streets back in the day fighting for the right to free speech.
Now I don’t know the president personally, but he has always struck me as a fairly decent chap and certainly one of the more respectable guys in charge of the country (disclaimer). However the whole case has a rather sinister air about it and something doesn’t quite feel right.
If Robert F. is eventually found guilty of “insulting the president” then where does it leave others? Column writers, bloggers, message board users, couples at the bus stop... the list goes on.
Watch this space carefully and for the time being watch your mouth.
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