Word: communist
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...just don't want him misused. He can be a universal person, but respect the image.' ALEIDA GUEVARA MARCH, daughter of communist icon Che Guevara, on asking companies to stop capitalizing on her father's image - which has been plastered on key chains, vodka and underwear - 40 years after his death
...Poles feel that change was forced on them by corrupt, distant and overeducated leaders. "There is a huge tradition in Poland of the masses grumbling about the nobility," says one Western diplomat. "The PIS is reaching out to all those people who have not been recognized by the post-communist élites...
That mistrust provides fertile ground for the Kaczynski brothers' conspiracy-minded brand of politics. Founded in 2001, PIS promised to rid Poland of what it calls the uklad, a supposed cabal of former communist officials and businessmen who they claim have controlled the country since 1989. Radek Sikorski, a former PIS member and Defense Minister, says the Kaczynskis were elected in 2005 because "they reflected the public mood of disgust with the previous regime." They are clearly at pains to project a simple, clean-living image. Jaroslaw, the Prime Minister, lives with his mother and a cat and does...
...Kaczynskis have been merciless with their own critics. Even fellow PIS politicians have been sacked for disagreeing with the Prime Minister. When former Foreign Minister Bronislaw Geremek criticized a proposed law that would have required virtually all Polish professionals to declare whether or not they had collaborated with the communist secret police, Jaroslaw Kaczynski said he was sullying Poland's good name...
Such behavior may hurt the party at the polls. Geremek became a hero for many at home and abroad for refusing to sign any such declaration, arguing that the government was trying to intimidate its enemies. "We are seeing the first real flowering of populism in the post-communist East," he told TIME. The Civic Platform is expected to pick up votes among the so-called élites that the Kaczynskis attack, but the PIS still appeals to a broader range of voters across society...