- The amount due to a particular party depends on the support it received in the election. The bigger it is, the more substantial the cash injection is
- If these changes were to come into force, they would have erased Donald Tusk’s decision from a decade ago
- PiS would receive about PLN 35 million, KO almost 30 million
A controversial project
A draft appeared on the Sejm website at night “on the amendment of certain acts in the field of remuneration of persons holding public office and on amending the act on political parties “.
A moment earlier, the document was unanimously supported by the Sejm’s regulatory committee. It means that not only PiS MPs voted for, but also the opposition.
The project provides for significant increases for the most important politicians.
From now on, the key point of reference will be the basic salary of a Supreme Court judge. It will depend on her how much the most important officials in the country will earn.
A deputy or senator will be able to earn 0.63 of the basic salary of a judge The Supreme Court, so almost 12.6 thousand. PLN gross. This is an increase in relation to the current salaries of parliamentarians by over 40 percent. There will also be diets.
The president, prime minister, ministers and their deputies, marshals and deputy speakers of the Sejm, and even voivodes and deputy voivodes will also earn much more.
But that’s not all. Reading the commission’s draft it appears that the annual subsidy for political parties will also go up significantly.
This is the money that every year from the state budget is received by the parties that introduced MPs to the Sejm in parliamentary elections, or at least exceeded the 3 percent threshold. votes (6% for the coalition). This is their primary source of income.
The amount due to a particular party depends on the support it received in the election. The bigger it is, the more substantial the cash injection is.
Millions in accounts
Adding a penny to the parties is to be related to the “democratic dimension of public life, which is reflected in particular in the possibility of reaching citizens by representatives of these parties” (fragment of the justification of the draft).
It is also about more mundane issues. The amount is to increase so that “it takes into account the changes resulting, inter alia, from the issue of increasing remuneration for employees and contractors providing services” – we read further in the draft.
How will the raise be calculated? It’s very simple. The previous mathematical formula in the act on political parties was supplemented with “x 1.5”. This means that parties will receive 1.5 times more annually than today.
It will look like this:
- PiS: PLN 34.9 million (previously 23.3 million)
- KO: PLN 29.8 million (previously 19.9)
- Left wing: PLN 17.1 million (previously PLN 11.4)
- PSL: PLN 12.4 million (previously 8.3)
- Confederation: PLN 10.2 million (previously PLN 6.8 million)
If these changes came into effect, would delete the decision of Donald Tusk, who a decade ago wanted to suspend budget support completely during the crisis for party activity. However, the PSL, the then coalition partner of the PO, did not agree to this.
Ultimately, the head of the Civic Platform (PO) managed to force the subsidy to be cut in half. At that time, MPs from PiS and SLD voted against this change.
It is not known whether the opposition will support these changes. Although all those present at the sitting of the Sejm’s regulatory committee were in favor, it may be otherwise in the plenary chamber.
We tried to get a comment from representatives of individual opposition clubs, but to no avail. Our question was only answered by the SLD spokeswoman. “There is no decision in this matter,” wrote Anna Maria Żukowska.
Unofficially, one of the politicians from the KO told us that the largest opposition group would “rather” support these solutions. – We did not mean the salaries of deputies and senators, but local government officials, who were pocketed by Kaczyński. Undeservedly. And this design equalizes that.
A brawl for prizes
It’s about the political brawl of 2018.
It was then that the Prime Minister’s Chancellery came to light, an idea was born to circumvent the applicable regulations on remuneration of the most important officials. It turned out that a system of permanent allowances to ministers’ salaries in the form of awards had been invented.
In response to an interpellation of the then Civic Platform deputy Krzysztof Brejza, the Chancellery of the Prime Minister presented a table with the total gross amounts for individual members of the government in 2017.
Awards were given to 21 constitutional ministers – from 65,000 PLN to over 80 thousand. PLN, 12 ministers from nearly 37 thousand. to almost 60 thousand PLN, and the then Prime Minister Beata Szydło over 65 thousand. zł.
In total, in 2016-2017, about PLN 6 million was spent on this system of additional salaries from the state budget.
As a result of an argument, Jarosław Kaczyński decided to run forward. He ordered the ministers to hand over the prizes to Caritas.
At the same time, he also hit the opposition, forcing its club to push through a project that would lower the salaries of deputies and senators by 20 percent. Local government officials also got their pockets.
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