Where to begin? Beata Sawicka, an opposition party deputy was caught red-handed by the CBA (Anti-Corruption Office) a week or two ago accepting a bribe in connection with the sale of land. A CBA man had gone undercover as a developer and elicited the bribe from Sawicka in an operation that lasted months and months – oh, years, perhaps – but which for operational / police procedural reasons had to be brought to fruition just before a general election.

But this time the ruling party – err, the CBA – may have overplayed its hand. Beata Sawicka did not go quietly. Nor has she committed suicide. CBA chief Mariusz Kamiński held a press conference a few days ago in which he displayed the video evidence and replayed a bugged telephone conversation between Sawicka and Person Unknown.

At this, Sawicka had a noisy and public nervous breakdown. She appealed, sobbing, to Kamiński – by name – not to engage in lynch justice, to permit her a fair trial and not to reveal any more of her private life to the court – of public opinion, that is. She wondered why the evidence shown to the public did not include the tender SMS messages sent her over the months by the undercover man. She was taken off to hospital.

The suggestion is, in short, that a weak person was seduced / manipulated by the secret services in order to score political points. One of the most unedifying scenes of the past week was Primesident Kaczyński pretending to have difficulty remembering the name of the opposition party candidate that his secret services had had arrested.

But even the stoniest hearted Mohair Beret may have been affected by the TV images of a woman seduced, duped, destroyed and abandoned in a sordid political ploy.