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Post by pieter on Dec 12, 2015 20:21:20 GMT -7
 Fifty thousand protest in Warsaw against ruling party12.12.2015 15:43Thousands took to the streets of several Polish cities Saturday to protest against what they claim is an erosion of democracy under the country’s new Law and Justice (PiS) government. Protesters march to the Presidential Palace in a protest held under the slogan "Citizens for Democracy." Photo: PAP/Rafał GuzThe main demonstration, under the slogan of " Citizens for Democracy," began in Warsaw at noon. The turnout far surpassed the expectations of the organisers, with some 50,000 people taking part in the march, according to the city authorities. Organised by a group called the Committee for the Defence of Democracy, the demonstration protested against the ruling Law and Justice party’s recent amendments to the law on the Constitutional Tribunal. The protesters, gathered in front of the seat of the Constitutional Tribunal, marched past the Polish Parliament to the Presidential Palace, chanting “ We will defend democracy” and “ Freedom, equality and democracy.”  The event was attended by members of the opposition from across the spectrum, including previously ruling Civic Platform ( PO), Polish Peoples’ Party ( PSL), Nowoczesna and the Democratic Left Alliance ( SLD). “ This is not only about the Tribunal, more is at stake than one legal clause or judge,” former labour minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz told the gathered crowds. “ We need to take note of the preamble to Poland’s Constitution which points to the interests of all citizens and not the interests of just one party,” he said. Opponents have accused PiS, which swept to power in general elections in October, of forcing through its own choice of judges to the Constitutional Tribunal in breach of democratic norms. However, PiS says that by selecting five new judges it was righting unfair appointments by the previous Civic Platform ( PO) government towards the end of its term in power. Similar protests were held in the eastern city of Lublin, Poznań, mid-western Poland, and Wrocław, in the south-west, among others. On Sunday, another demonstration will be held in the northern city of Gdańsk. (aba/rk) Source: IAR |
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Post by pieter on Dec 12, 2015 20:23:34 GMT -7
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Post by karl on Dec 13, 2015 6:50:39 GMT -7
Pieter
Interesting cause and effect with this new Polish Federal Government and policies it supports. Rather good or bad, the people are speaking and it would behoove for the new government to listion to what they have to say. What people want, usually people will have.
Karl
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Post by pieter on Dec 13, 2015 11:23:22 GMT -7
Rival marches in Warsaw mark martial law anniversary13.12.2015 10:59Several marches are to take place in the capital throughout Sunday, marking the anniversary of martial law, imposed in Poland by the then communist leadership 34 years ago today.  Photo: PAP/Jacek TurczykOne of the biggest commemorative events to be held in Warsaw is the ruling Law and Justice ( PiS) party's fifth March of Freedom and Solidarity, to begin at 1pm local time. The protesters, expected to number 10,000, are to show their support for the ruling government, which rose to power after the 25 October parliamentary elections, and President Andrzej Duda, formerly a PIS member. " Let us gather at the march to show Poland that those who want to deceive Poles will not have public support, while those who act in the country's interest will receive such backing," party leader Jarosław Kaczyński said ahead of the event on Thursday. As a way of commemorating the commnunist-imposed martial law of 1981, other groups of citizens are to take to the streets to speak out on the ruling Law and Justice's recent amendments to the law on the Constitutional Tribunal, a highly contentious issue in Polish society. The opposition has fiercely criticised Law and Justice for pushing through the appointment of five judges in the 15-member Constitutional Tribunal in what the critics say was a breach of democratic standards. PiS itself says the step, pre-empting a Constitutional court ruling on the matter, overrides unfair appointments of the previous Civic Platform government shortly before ending its term in office. An hour earlier, another group will protest against what they consider a distorted coverage of developments linked to the Constitutional Tribunal in Poland's mainstream media, critical of the PiS government. Also, this evening, two separate protests of those opposing Law and Justice policies are to take place outside the home of PiS chairman and former prime minister Jarosław Kaczyński. The demonstrations allude to an annual vigil outside the house of former communist martial law leader General Wojciech Jaruzelski until his death in May 2014. For years, hundreds of citizens had been gathering at the site to commemorate the brutal crackdown of the anti-communist opposition, unleashed with the imposition of martial law on 13 December 1981. (aba/pk/rk)  PiS chairman and former prime minister Jarosław KaczyńskiSource: PAP, IAR
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Post by Jaga on Dec 13, 2015 11:31:07 GMT -7
Pieter, thanks for posting. It is bad that they had conflicting marches but it was good that the opposition realized that this new government goes beyond their worst nightmares.
Nobody expect so much changes so fast - firing constitutional judges, firing thousands of administration workers etc.
Pieter, I changes the fonts of the titles to slightly smaller, so that one can read it better. I hope you don't mind.
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Post by pieter on Dec 13, 2015 11:52:09 GMT -7
Dear Jaga, Firing constitutional judges and thousands of administration workers is a bad start of a government and a bad sign for Polish democracy. The West doesn't know what impact that has on Poland. We hardly hear it on the news over here. I had to read it in this thread from your reply and to read Polish news (Polish radio), or The Warsaw Business Voice every now and then to be informed about Poland. That is also a reason why this Forum and Bo's Forum are so valuable to us. I hope that mass demonstrations of PO ( Civic Platform), PSL (the Polish Peoples Party), the liberal political party Nowoczesna and the Centrolew of Zjednoczona Lewica ( SLD plus Unia Pracy, Twój Ruch, Partia Zieloni and Polish Socialist Party (PPS) ), the new leftwing political party Razem, and Polish leftwing intellectuals of Krytyka Polityczna ( www.krytykapolityczna.pl/ ) will continue to oppose these restrictions and setbacks in the Polish democracy. The Polish legal system is under threat and thus the fact that the separation of powers, the trias politica principle don't exist anymore under the rule of the present government. Cheers, Pieter |
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Post by pieter on Dec 13, 2015 16:02:22 GMT -7
 Warsaw Business JournalPis amendments to Constitutional Tribunal ruled unconstitutionalDecember 10, 2015 Wojciech Rylukowski Demonstrators cheer before the Constitutional Tribunal building after the special court partly approved a move concerning its composition made by the previous ruling liberal Civic Platform party, in Warsaw, Poland on Thursday, Dec. 3, 2015. In an escalating political row between the new ruling Law and Justice party and the Civic Platform, both parties seem to have bent the law while trying to appoint judges to the special court. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)On Wednesday, The Constitutional Tribunal ruled that some of the amendments to the law passed by the ruling party PiS in November related to the Constitutional Tribunal are unconstitutional, further exacerbating the crisis into which Poland had recently plunged.  Members of the opposition party Civic Platform hold up copies of Poland’s constitution to protest a move by the new right-wing government to put five of its supporters on the Constitutional Tribunal, in Warsaw, Poland, on Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2015. The appointments would replace recent appointments made by Civic Platform before it lost power. Critics of the government say Poland is in a constitutional crisis and the government is violating democratic norms. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)The constitutional court said that the shortening of the term of the head and deputy head of the Tribunal was illegal. The court also said that the beginning of a judge’s term in office cannot be dependent on the swearing-in by the president. As a result, the Constitutional Tribunal confirmed that the choice of three judges by parliament in October is valid and PiS had no right to choose the another three to replace them in November. The issue concerning the Constitutional Tribunal has been dragging on for more than two weeks. In November, PiS and Kukiz’ 15 passed a new bill on the Constitutional Tribunal, on the basis of which it had annulled the appointment of all five judges chosen by the previous parliament in October. PiS argued that two of them had been nominated prematurely to replace judges whose terms were due to end in December. Last week, the Sejm, with votes from Law and Justice (PiS), voted in five new Constitutional Tribunal judges presented by PiS. The following day, the Constitutional Tribunal ruled that a paragraph of the amendment to the law on the Constitutional Tribunal, adopted by the Sejm in June on the basis of which two out of five judges were elected in October, was not constitutional. The choice of the remaining three has been ruled valid. Thus, the Constitutional Tribunal obliged the president to swear them in. However, the President had refused do to so. Instead he received oaths from all five judges chosen by PiS in November. |
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Post by pieter on Dec 13, 2015 17:49:33 GMT -7
 Poland protests: Thousands rally to support Law and Justice party Thousands of people marched through Warsaw to show support for the ruling Law and Justice party following anti-government protests on Saturday. The demonstrators chanted the name of the party's leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, and President Andrzej Duda, an ally of the party, at a rally on Sunday. It follows protests organised by the Committee for the Defence of Democracy. The group accuses Poland's government of trying to manipulate state institutions.  Law and Justice party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski and President Andrzej DudaTensions rose in Poland after the conservative Law and Justice party attempted to replace five out of 15 judges of the constitutional court. The opposition said the move was illegal, with MPs describing it as " a creeping coup d'etat". The Law and Justice party argued it needed to appoint new judges to ensure a balance of power. It accused the Civic Platform party - which came second in elections after governing Poland for eight years - of refusing to accept the election results. " We won the election, but we have no right to set laws and remodel Poland," Mr Kaczynski said to the crowds on Sunday. " This court is supposed to be the stronghold... defending the system, defending all that has been bad and disgraceful in the last 26 years." |
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Post by pieter on Dec 13, 2015 17:50:13 GMT -7
Seems that Poland is polarized like the USA and other democracies in the world today. A wave of nationalism and new rightwing populism is rolling over Europe. In Central- and Eastern European countries National Conservative regimes gained power and are changing the political and legal systems in Hungary, Poland and the Russian Federation. In Western-Europe the Nationalist and rightwing populist movements are in the opposition and are making the traditional democratic political parties and politicians of the center right and center left nervous. Anti-immigration, anti-political elite (of the parliamentarian democratic institutions), anti-Brussels and anti-European integration forces gain power. The people who support moderate centrist or traditional leftwing and rightwing parties are worried. A Dutch referendum will be held on an EU agreement for closer relations with Ukraine, after 427,000 people backed a citizens' initiative. I believe that a majority will vote no in this referendum, because people consider Ukraine to be a corrupt, nepotist country with a lot of crime and contrabande. It will also be a vote against Brussels and an expansion of the EU. But that is just my subjective prediction. The Referendum must stil be held. I hope that the Poles can remain stability, the economical progress it has made in the last 11 years. And that unconstitutional and unlawful decisions can be made undone. If the government continues with the present course, civil unrest and large demonstrations will continue to take place and disrupt the peace in society. In July 2006 PiS formed a majority government with the populist Self-Defense of the Republic of Poland and nationalist League of Polish Families, headed by Jarosław Kaczyński. Association with these parties, on the margins of Polish politics, severely affected the reputation of PiS. When accusations of corruption and sexual harassment against the Andrzej Lepper, the leader of Self Defense, surfaced, PiS chose to end the coalition and called for new elections. Today PiS alone can rule, but it has to take care of party wings and dissidents. It should not have Samoobrona and League of Polish Families like elements which can disrupt the unity of the party and the government. PiS is not PO and will have a different course. But governing is also making compromises. So PiS will have to be pragmatic and realistic. They have government experience. They have fierce resistance from an opposition. Ofcourse the Civic Platform (PO) is pissed that after nearly a decade of succesful economical and financial governance and rule it had to give power away to PiS. So PO will give PiS a hard time from the opposition benches in the Sejm, the Polish parliament. Cheers, Pieter polandsite.proboards.com/thread/3528/protest-warsaw-ruling-party?page=1&scrollTo=29896 |
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Post by JustJohn or JJ on Dec 14, 2015 5:26:30 GMT -7
50,000 Hit Streets of Poland to Rally Against 'Creeping Coup d’Etat'
'My freedom and everybody else's freedom is in danger,' says protester.
by: Andrea Germanos, staff writer  Tens of thousands of Poles angered by an ongoing constitutional conflict march in Warsaw, Poland on Saturday, Dec. 12, 2015, to protest against the role that
President Andrzej Duda and the new conservative government have had in the swelling discord. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)
Chanting "We will defend the constitution!" an estimated 50,000 people rallied in the Polish capital Warsaw on Saturday to denounce what they see as threats to
democracy by the newly elected government.Demonstrations were held in other cities across Poland as well. As Bloomberg reports, the conservative, Jaroslaw Kaczynski-led Law and Justice Party, which gained power in October, "has forced out the head of the country’s anti-corruption agency, limited the opposition's oversight of secret services and outlined plans to overhaul public media, raising concerns about the system of checks and balances, guaranteed by the constitution." In addition, as the Telegraph reports, "Some opposition MPs have described the new government's move to stack the court with its own people as a 'creeping coup d’etat.'" Organized by the Committee for the Defense of Democracy (KOD), the marches also took aim at President Andrzej Duda, an ally of the Law and Justice Party, the Associated Press reports. "I fear that we will become an intolerant country where minorities are oppressed," 35-year-old trader Karol Katra told Agence-France Presse. Another protester, Bartosz Kaminski, told the news agency, "My freedom and everybody else's freedom is in danger." Ahead of the protests, KOD movement founder Mateusz Kijowski said, "Together we will stand as a nonpartisan front to protect democracy and show our discontent regarding what is being done to institutions in a democratic state." |
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Post by Jaga on Dec 14, 2015 21:29:35 GMT -7
My Polish friends are very upset about it. The right wing had to prepare their action way ahead of time, but they kept their plans secret. I did not believe that Kaczynski has still so much power. He is a spiritual leader of the right wing.
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Post by pieter on Dec 19, 2015 10:24:53 GMT -7
Jaga, I had contact today with my cousin in Poznań who went to a demonstration there today and contact with someone from Wrocław via Facebook too. In Wrocław there was a mass demonstration too. All over Poland there were protests against the present government. One of my contacts said that Razem had killed or finished the chances of the left, by dividing the leftwing vote. Zjednoczona Lewica (the alliance of the Democratic Left Alliance ( SLD), Your Movement ( TR), Polish Socialist Party ( PPS), Labour United ( UP), and The Greens ( Partia Zieloni)) lost. In the 2015 parliamentary election on 25 October 2015, Zjednoczona Lewica received 7.6% of the vote, below the 8% electoral threshold, leaving the alliance without any parliamentary representation. Razem registered lists for the 2015 parliamentary election in all electoral districts and received 3.6% of the vote in the election, below the 5% threshold to gain seats in parliament. Platforma Obywatelska probably lost votes to Nowoczesna (English: Modern, styled as .Nowoczesna), a liberal political party in Poland founded in late May 2015 by the economist Ryszard Petru, which received 7.6% of votes in the 2015 Polish parliamentary election, which resulted in winning 28 seats in Sejm. (I don't understand why Zjednoczona Lewica which also received 7,6 % of the vote didn'd got seats in the Sejm. Were the 7,6% of the votes of Nowoczesna also not to few to reach the 8% electoral threshold? Anyhow Platforma Obywatelska lost votes to Nowoczesna, Kukiz'15, maybe the Polish Peoples Party (PSL), Solidarna Polska (United Poland) and Polska Razem (Poland Together),      The problem of the Polish moderate center right, reasonable conservative and christian-democratic right and the center-left and left is the fact the Polish politics is divided. I think about the saying we have in Holland, 'de Poolse Landdag', 'Polish landday' which stands for a wilde disorderly gathering. which stands for a period in Polish history that the weak divided nobilitity democracy, the Polish Landtag was very divided and the magnates in it quarrelled a lot in it about power, inlfuence spheres and which king they would vote. The weakness of that nobel democracy in the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania lead to the downfall of that empire and to the occupation by Czarist Russia, Prussia and the Austrian Habsburg empire.  The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at its maximum extentI saw the Polish film and television director and screenwriter Agnieszka Holland on the National Dutch Public Broadcast Corporation NOS Journaal on the 8:00pm evening news. She spoke to a huge mass in Warsaw about the values of Polish democracy and freedom, an independent legal system and the right to opposition. Via Facebook I spoke with a Polish cousin, who was actually at a demonstration over there in her city. From a Polish friend I heard about the fact that there was a huge demonstration in Wrocław too. nos.nl/artikel/2076188-opnieuw-massaal-protest-polen-tegen-regering.htmlCheers, pieter |
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Post by Jaga on Dec 19, 2015 13:49:17 GMT -7
Pieter, they were going to have people all over Poland demonstrating, but apparently there was a bomb threat in Warsaw. Maybe the threat was made up, but it destroyed at least Warsaw demonstration.
Kukiz party was supporting PIS, but I hope they would woke up and join the opposition.
Pieter, you said that the US is polarized. At least in the US the budget was signed todaY! So it is getting better here but not there in Poland
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Post by Jaga on Dec 19, 2015 14:32:24 GMT -7
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Post by pieter on Dec 19, 2015 15:40:39 GMT -7
Jaga,
I heard Poles and the Dutch news reporter from Warsaw speaking about authoritarian leadership, a nationalistic government and possible dictatorial behaviour of the PiS government. The Dutch National TV news is not very populistic and is known for it's fact checking and research journalism. They won't take easy quotes. They showed serious Polish intellectuals speaking. Even an old guy who said that he had wintessed the Warsaw uprising and the communist years. He said that he had never imagined that these times would return.
Cheers,
Pieter
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