Shouts of “down with communism” attempted to drown out proceedings in the Polish parliament on Tuesday as the house voted to elect a new speaker, who detractors allege harbours unconstitutionally hard-line left-wing views.
New Left Party parliamentarian Włodzimierz Czarzasty was elected as the new speaker of the Polish lower house (Sejm) on Tuesday afternoon with the support of a coalition of left-wing and centrist parties including the government’s Civic Platform party of Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
The election was opposed by right-wing parties including the Law and Justice (PiS) faction, presently out of power but a major player in post-Cold War Polish politics. As Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski took the podium to propose Czarzasty’s candidacy, praising what he described as a man of “dialogue, culture, and responsibility”, PiS members began to chant “down with communism”.
Turning to face the conservative benches Gawkowski vowed “no amlllllount of shouting will stop this”, prompting the PiS to walk out while continuing to chant. The senior marshal of the house attempted to bring the meeting to order by ringing the bell to no immediate effect. Polsat News described the upset as a “brawl” in the chamber.
After the event, PiS promoted a chamber speech by their Vice President Przemysław Czarnek opposing the proposal to make Czarzasty speaker. Czarnek alleged that the left-wing lawmaker had been a member of Poland’s communist party even in the late Cold War-era when the country was ahead of most Soviet-bloc countries in transitioning to a form of democracy.
The new speaker had previously said he respected Poland’s Communist-era dictator Wojciech Jaruzelski, and had called a Polish general who passed military secrets to NATO in the 1980s a traitor, it was alleged. Czarnek told the chamber communism isn’t actually legal in Poland and if Czarzasty is still a communist he can’t legally be speaker.
Protests and allegations or not, the vote to appoint passed 236 to 209 votes.
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