Jacek Olgierd Kurski (, born 22 February 1966 in

Gdańsk Gdańsk is a city on the Baltic Sea, Baltic coast of northern Poland, and the capital of the Pomeranian Voivodeship. With a population of 486,492, Data for territorial unit 2261000. it is Poland's sixth-largest city and principal seaport. Gdań ...

) is a Polish politician and journalist who has been described as a "spin doctor" for the national-conservative PiS party.

Political career

Kurski was first elected to the

Sejm The Sejm (), officially known as the Sejm of the Republic of Poland (), is the lower house of the bicameralism, bicameral parliament of Poland. The Sejm has been the highest governing body of the Third Polish Republic since the Polish People' ...

on 25 September 2005, getting 26,446 votes in 25 – Gdańsk as a member of the

Law and Justice Law and Justice ( , PiS) is a Right-wing populism, right-wing populist and National conservatism, national-conservative List of political parties in Poland, political party in Poland. The party is a member of European Conservatives and Refo ...

party. He was re-elected in the October 2007 vote and served until 2009 in this capacity. Kurski was elected to

Member of the European Parliament A member of the European Parliament (MEP) is a person who has been Election, elected to serve as a popular representative in the European Parliament. When the European Parliament (then known as the Common Assembly of the European Coal and S ...

where he served from 2009 to 2014. On 8 September 2010, Kurski was the only MEP to vote against a condemnation by the

European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the two legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it ...

of the execution of Iranian national

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani (; born 1967) is an Iranian woman convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and adultery. She gained international notoriety for originally being sentenced to death by stoning for her crimes. Her sentence was commuted a ...

stoning Stoning, or lapidation, is a method of capital punishment where a group throws stones at a person until the subject dies from blunt trauma. It has been attested as a form of punishment for grave misdeeds since ancient times. Stoning appears t ...

. Kurski stated that he voted against by error, and he corrected his vote almost immediately. He then returned to the Sejm where he served as State Undersecretary for the

Ministry of Culture and National Heritage The Ministry of Culture and National Heritage () is a ministry within Polish government led by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage responsible for national heritage preservation and Polish culture promotion. Ministry oversees state o ...

for two years.

President of Telewizja Polska

In January 2016, Kurski became President of

Telewizja Polska Telewizja Polska S.A. (; TVP), also known in English as Polish Television, is a Public broadcasting, public service broadcaster in Poland, founded in 1952. It is the oldest and largest Polish television network. After 2015, when the right-wing po ...

. In July 2016 ''Politico Europe'' criticized the state broadcaster for strong pro-government bias. He left the network in 2022 after turning it into a propaganda vehicle for the nationalist PiS party according to critics.

World Bank

In December 2022, he was appointed as Poland's representative to the

World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and Grant (money), grants to the governments of Least developed countries, low- and Developing country, middle-income countries for the purposes of economic development ...

. He had no prior finance experience. He was dismissed from this role in 2023.

Private life

Kurski is the son of scientist and shipbuilder Witold Kurski and

Solidarity Solidarity or solidarism is an awareness of shared interests, objectives, standards, and sympathies creating a psychological sense of unity of groups or classes. True solidarity means moving beyond individual identities and single issue politics ...

activist and senator Anna Kurska, as well as the younger brother of Jarosław Kurski who is a

Gazeta Wyborcza (; ''The Electoral Gazette'' in English) is a Polish nationwide daily newspaper based in Warsaw, Poland. It was launched on 8 May 1989 on the basis of the Polish Round Table Agreement and as a press organ of the Solidarity (Polish trade union), t ...

journalist. In 1991, he married Monika Mucek. They had three children together: Zdzisław (b. 1991), Zuzanna (b. 1994) and Olgierd (b. 2007). They divorced in 2015. On July 31, 2018 he remarried to Joanna Wąsowska ''primo voto'' Klimek (b. 1974). On July 18th, 2020, after his and Joanna's previous church weddings were

annulled Annulment is a legal procedure within secular and religious legal systems for declaring a marriage null and void. Unlike divorce, it is usually retroactive, meaning that an annulled marriage is considered to be invalid from the beginning almo ...

, they held a church wedding at the Divine Mercy Sanctuary in

Kraków , officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the List of cities and towns in Poland, second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 ...

. The event was criticized in the media for being less private and more political, even state-oriented, and was pointed to as evidence of undesirable ties between state power, the media it manages and the Catholic Church, and the impossibility of obtaining an annulment of the marriage by those not connected with the government was raised. From their marriage, on March 25, 2021, a daughter, Anna Klara Theodora, was born.

References

External links