‘Your pain is better than mine!’. So runs the refrain of the number one song in Poland at the moment. It’s a song that has caused a ferocious political backlash. Sounding more like a folksy beer hall tune than protest anthem, it has proved an astonishing and immediate success, reaching number one in the influential Polish Radio Three charts last week and accumulating 10 million views on YouTube (no mean feat in a country of 40 million). But while the people are humming the tune, the ruling politicians certainly aren’t dancing to it.
The controversy stems from the song’s perceived criticism of Jarosław Kaczyński, Poland’s former Prime Minister and leader of the ruling Law and Justice Party. Although formally only a backbencher, Kaczyński is said to wield the true political power in his Party; to the point where many consider him to be the country’s unofficial head of state.
“You alone can soothe your pain, everyone else is in trouble. Two limousines, or one, the entire cemetery just for you,” sings Kazik Staszewski to a jaunty accordion accompaniment. And by doing so he points to the epicentre of the public discontent.
When Poland began to take measures to limit the spread of coronavirus, it closed down a swathe of public places, including cemeteries. For the Polish, cemeteries are a national preoccupation. Family graves are tended on a weekly basis, even those several generations old. All Saints’ Day, or Zaduszki, is a particularly important national festival, when ancestors are honoured and graveyards lit up with countless rows of candles and miniature flags. The honouring of the dead is a keenly cherished cultural practice in a country which is 85% Catholic.
The closure of the cemeteries, therefore, has been one of the most significant — and stark — moments in the pandemic. It is largely unprecedented in this country, even though it has such a tragic history of disaster and disruption.
No wonder, when it emerged in April that Kaczyński had continued to visit cemeteries that were closed to the public, there was an outburst of anger from opposition politicians and on social media. One rule for him, another for everyone else.
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