2023-08-18 04:45:42
Despite the challenges, the Law and Justice party perseveres. The Polish Parliament, controlled by nationalist populists, decided on Thursday to hold a controversial national referendum on the day of the legislative elections, October 15.
The opposition has announced a boycott of this referendum organized on the initiative of the ruling Law and Justice party, which is, according to it, only an attempt to “manipulate” the elections. The holding of the referendum was adopted by 234 votes for, 210 against and seven abstentions.
An impact on the legislative elections?
The PiS wants the Poles to answer four questions: do they want to “sell off state assets by selling them to foreign entities”, do they support “a possible increase in the retirement age”, do they want “remove the barrier on the border with Belarus” and are they in favor of “the admission of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa, in accordance with the mechanism of forced relocation imposed by the European bureaucracy”.
According to the power, the questions are important for the future of Poland and the life of the Poles. Government spokesman Piotr Müller said that the leader of the main opposition party, the Civic Platform (PO), Donald Tusk “is afraid of this referendum like the devil of holy water” because by their answers the citizens risk limiting its next decisions, in the event of victory in the legislative elections.
Questions “unimportant” for the opposition
For its part, the entire opposition denounces a “shameless deception” on the part of the authorities. “You are throwing irrelevant questions in the face of the Poles that no one, no party is raising today,” said Krzysztof Gawkowski, a leftist MP, on Thursday before the vote. According to him, no one in the opposition was talking about raising the retirement age, forced relocations or privatizations.
For Paulina Hennig-Kloska of the centrist Polska 2050 party, the referendum is organized with the aim of “manipulating the elections, and once again dividing society”. According to leftist MP Joanna Senyszyn the questions posed by PiS are simply “deeply stupid, biased, ideological, anti-European, based on false foundations and imprecise”.
The opposition also considers that the organization of the referendum is a means of circumventing the limits of electoral expenditure, precisely defined by law, whereas the amount of public expenditure in a referendum campaign knows no restrictions.
According to polls, the PiS, in power since 2015, is credited with around 33% of voting intentions, just ahead of the Civic Platform (29%). Next are the libertarian ultranationalists of Konfederacja (12%), the Third Voice coalition (9.5%) and the left (nearly 9%).
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