Polish left-wing party faces questions over leaders’ huge salaries

The left-wing Together (Razem) party is facing criticism after it emerged that its four leaders received salaries of up to 200,000 zloty (€45,000) last year, amounting to almost triple the national average wage which they had claimed to have been making.

The party’s spokesman has explained that the excessive earnings were the result of “one off” payments that were used to fund their parliamentary election campaign. But this has in turn raised further questions about potential breeches of campaign financing laws.

The issue emerged after tax returns were published by parliament for the party’s four leaders, Adrian Zandberg, Marcelina Zawisza, Maciej Konieczny and Paulina Matysiak.

In August of last year, the party’s boss, Adrian Zandberg, said that “the rule” in the party is that its workers are paid the average national wage, which at the time came to around 5,000 zloty (about €1,150) a month.

The party has campaigned for better wages for public-sector employees, such as nurses and teachers, while criticising the high wages earned by members of the European Parliament.

However, according to their tax returns, last year Zandberg, Zawisza, Konieczny and Matysiak received 199,191 zloty, 200,752 zloty, 199,581 zloty and 201,801 zloty respectively from the party, reports Rzeczpospolita.

Together’s spokesperson, Dorota Olko, has explained that the leadership had received “one-off higher salaries” in the election year, with the addition amounts transferred to funding their campaign for parliamentary elections, at which the party was standing alongside two other left-wing groups.

Konieczny notes that he transferred 56,000 zloty from the “one-off” salary to the campaign, which was the maximum permitted donation from candidates last year. He has, however, refused to explain what happened to the remaining 144,000 zloty.

This in turn has raised questions about compliance with parliamentary campaign financing rules, reports Rzeczpospolita.

In the October 2019 elections, members of the Together party – as well as those of Wiosna (Spring), another left-wing party – ran from the party lists of the post-communist Democratic Left Alliance (SLD).

The purpose of doing so was to ensure that they would jointly receive at least the 5% of votes needed nationally to be allowed to enter parliament. At the 2015 parliamentary election, when standing along, Together only received 3.6% of the vote, and therefore did not win any seats.

According to Polish laws on political parties, electoral campaigns can only be financed from an “electoral fund” (fundusz wyborczy) that is financed by the party officially standing in the election (in this case SLD) or through donations from individuals.

This means that the Together party was not legally allowed to contribute funds to SLD’s campaign budget, and may have breached the law through their round-about campaign donations.

The party has reportedly had internal disagreement over methods of allocating funds to the campaign, according to Onet.pl’s sources.

This is also not the first time that Together has run into issues with campaign financing. In 2016, the Polish Electoral Commission (PKW) found that the party had incorrectly transferred part of its spending (10,000 zloty) directly to the campaign account, and not to the designated electoral fund.

After the Supreme Court rejected the party’s appeal against the decision, Together were docked some of the state funding that they (and other political parties in Poland) receive.

Main photo images: Razem/Facebook

This article has been updated to more clearly present the amounts earned from the party by the four leaders.

Maria Wilczek

Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.