Polish president seeks constitutional referendum
Polish President Andrzej Duda announced on Wednesday that he wants the Polish people to vote on the constitution in 2018. Poles have the right to give their opinion on whether the constitution needs to be changed, he said. The initiative has provoked a mixed response in the Polish press.
Against EU interference and for sovereignty
The editor-in-chief of the pro-government web portal wpolityce.pl believes the time has come for a new constitution:
“Today, 100 years after regaining independence and after almost 30 years of alleged freedom from Soviet influence, the time has come for another revision of Polish law. The constitution, which has strengthened the old-boy networks of the round table and condoned post-communism, does not offer the Polish people total protection. Moreover today we face a new threat and a new attempt to violate our sovereignty. It is time to change this. The EU expects more and more from its member states. The constitution should resolutely protect our interests. It should be a defence wall against the secondary law of the EU. It should not allow our national sovereignty to be violated.”
As if thieves could reform criminal law
For Gazeta Wyborcza the proposal is pure mockery:
“It's bad enough that President Andrzej Duda lied in voters' faces when he talked on May 3 at the castle square in Warsaw of the 'achievements of the constitution of 1997' which had 'been in force for 20 years'. After all, the president knows very well that the constitution was only in effect for 18.5 years, until November and December of 2015 when it was brutally trampled on by a certain man called Andrzej Duda - a president who at the behest of a party [the ruling PiS] failed to fulfil his duty of taking the oath of the constitutional judges elected by parliament. … Worse still is that his announcement that the PiS wants to start a serious debate about the constitution is like the association of dealers in stolen goods, thieves and fraudsters announcing that the time has come to start thinking seriously about criminal law. It mocks the citizens of the Republic.”