After years in jail as a dissident under communism, Adam Michnik took part in the groundbreaking 1989 Round Table talks that brought semi-free elections to Poland and helped bring down the Berlin Wall. Now, at 70, he is in a fresh battle: to protect democracy from the threat he sees from Poland’s new rulers, the Law and Justice party, The Financial Times reports:
Michnik accuses Law and Justice of creating demokratura, an amalgam of the Polish for democracy and dictatorship, similar to that in Russia or Hungary.
“We do have democratic institutions, but they’re constantly restrained. The constitution is violated, and they say they’ll go further,” he says…
“I never thought I would see such events again in Poland,” he says in his office stuffed with books at Gazeta Wyborcza, the newspaper where he is still editor-in-chief after a quarter of a century. “The worst is that . . . during communism we could blame Russia, or Brezhnev. But now we chose them, in our foolishness.”
