Polonia / Let's talk about Sweden and other Scandinavian countries [236]


Bollocks.

I've been to Stockholm, unlike you, and it's certainly not the case.

News / Duda invited to march in Poland's Independence Day parade [182]


How on earth can you mention God in the same sentence as suggesting that someone is "badmouthable"?

It's like all those bald guys that turn up chanting crap about Poland being Catholics - why do I never see them in the church?

News / Duda invited to march in Poland's Independence Day parade [182]


I was told by one mischief maker that the Lech guys see it as an excuse to trash Warsaw and nothing else. The chance to rip up the centre of Warsaw and get away with it is just too good to refuse in their eyes.


Thing is Polonius, a lot of such people are involved with charity work - they are the genuine patriots, even if they don't say so. I know one very very gay guy in Poznań - "flamboyant" doesn't describe him well enough. Yet he volunteers with his local parish on some social projects - the local priests accept him, he accepts them, and they work well together.

On the flip side, I've never seen a single stereotypical "nationalist" doing a damned thing to help anyone in Poland.

Look at America - volunteering is seen as a very patriotic thing to do. Where are the nationalists when it comes to doing anything other than drinking beer and being unemployable?

News / Duda invited to march in Poland's Independence Day parade [182]


Indeed. What the Party did was to recruit exactly these type of people - they would seek big, stupid young men from pathological families and give them training, good salaries and privileges - and turned them into willing machines. From memory, they formed the nucleus of the ZOMO forces - because they were very willing to inflict pain and suffering on their fellow Poles in exchange for power and money.

Real patriots don't go around chanting silly things and smashing stuff up - real patriots stay at home, clean up litter, help people and do everything they can to make Poland a better place.

News / Duda invited to march in Poland's Independence Day parade [182]

Just something that I remembered - correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't PiS organise some march elsewhere in Poland last year?

Travel / I'm so bored in Poland! [129]


Fair enough, Los Angeles isn't a beautiful place, but if you'd actually visited Opole...you wouldn't be breathing fresh air ;)

News / Duda invited to march in Poland's Independence Day parade [182]


Yes, just look at these ordinary Poles.



Pull the other one, Polonius.The march is a far-right march - so far right that even PiS have absolutely nothing to do with it.

Do you really think we're blind?

News / Duda invited to march in Poland's Independence Day parade [182]


Can you honestly imagine Duda associating with a fringe nationalist movement? I can't. Kaczyński learnt very quickly why it was a bad idea, and he's not going to tolerate Duda associating with them, not least because he wants undisputed power among the social right wing.


See, Polonius, this attitude is exactly what winds up the majority of Poles. Most of us have never seen "true patriots" doing a single thing to help society - indeed, many of them don't work, don't volunteer and do nothing except drink beer and swear.

News / Duda invited to march in Poland's Independence Day parade [182]


PiS might have had some involvement in the first march, but they rapidly distanced themselves from it when it became obvious that it was being used as an excuse by football hooligans to destroy Warsaw. It's very much a Ruch Narodowy and other far-right nationalist meeting now, and the invitation to Duda is nothing but a political ploy on their part.


I could see Macierewicz turning up, but he does what he wants anyway.

Duda's not going anywhere near this march - he will make some excuses and avoid it.

News / Duda invited to march in Poland's Independence Day parade [182]

If Duda turns up, he legitimises the fringe nationalists that march on that day. It would be a suicidal move on his part - PiS (apart from a brief flirtation by Kaczyński a while ago) generally aren't supportive of them, and Duda supporting them would almost guarantee a fall in his approval rating.

Still, great move by the organisers. They'll force Duda into making a decision before the election - and if he accepts, then PO will have a field day associating PiS with far right nationalists. If he declines, then it shows that they have no legitimacy. Works for me :D

News / Polish President vetoes PO's dingbat gender law [173]

Do you think 99% of people in Poland knew anything other than "Duda used his veto already"? Probably not.

News / Polish President vetoes PO's dingbat gender law [173]


He actually lost a lot in terms of image - it was the first real negative move of the campaign, and it was exceptionally stupid to do something seen in a bad light (vetoing a democratically-decided law) at this time. Kaczyński's overuse of the veto did a lot of harm to his image, after all.

News / Polish President vetoes PO's dingbat gender law [173]

Don't count your chickens before they hatch, Polonius.

News / Polish President vetoes PO's dingbat gender law [173]


Indeed. As I said, it seems more that PO knew that this law wouldn't get passed (in this form) and helped it get through parliament for the sole reason of provoking Duda's veto. The PSL and more conservative members of PO would have been told that they were free to abstain from the overriding of the veto (in order to get their support in the first place for the plan) and the whole thing worked wonderfully well. Anyone that would be angry with PO for not passing the law would be voting for alternative parties anyway, so they haven't lost anything and actually gained a bit of political capital from Duda using the veto.

Duda should have been better advised, but I also suspect that he didn't want to provoke the wrath of more conservative elements in society. Difficult situation for him, to be fair.

News / Polish President vetoes PO's dingbat gender law [173]


I didn't post it because it was too long, but if he had referred it to the Constitutional Tribunal and they ruled it was in accordance with the Constitution, then he would have been obliged to sign it. Probably from a PR point of view, it would be a total disaster for this Act to be introduced during a PiS government.


Do you think it does? I don't really see it, but I guess from my viewpoint, everyone is just rolling their eyes at the priest in question.


This election has gone bananas. Kopacz was saying that coal is Poland's energy security, while Szydło is saying that Poland should invest more in nuclear and renewable sources. Both parties are very, very fortunate that there's no credible third challenger waiting...

News / Polish President vetoes PO's dingbat gender law [173]

I'm not 100% certain on this, but I think he had 30 days from the time that it cleared both the Sejm and the Senat. What he could have done was to send it back to the Sejm with his proposed amendments - which wouldn't have had time to be debated between now and the end of the current Sejm.

I'm honestly puzzled why Duda chose to veto the bill rather than simply kick it into legislative limbo. The only thing I can think of is that PiS are/were worried about the threat from Kukiz/Korwin and so needed something to make a stand on.

Got it. From the Constitution...


libr.sejm.gov.pl/tek01/txt/kpol/eng/ek5.html

So yes, he didn't have much room to move - he had 21 days to either confirm the law or send it back to the Sejm.

News / Polish President vetoes PO's dingbat gender law [173]

Oh, it is. There are endless examples of traps being set in politics like this. Kaczyński himself pulled off a great move when he had Lepper investigated for corruption - Lepper was then abandoned by Samoobrona and Kaczyński mopped up their voters for PiS as they abandoned the party without their leader. Or even more so - he allowed Giertych to make an absolute idiot out of himself and then took his voters.

News / Polish President vetoes PO's dingbat gender law [173]


People moaning and complaining is meaningless. All that matters is the final result.


Essentially, my perception is pretty simple. PO knew that PiS were doing well in the polls after Duda ran a very successful campaign, and so they needed something to show him to be just like the rest of the Kaczyński clique. So they realised that Grodzka had a proposed bill waiting there - and they knew that Duda would be forced into making a decision on something controversial (for PiS). If he signed it, the party might get angry with him - and he would need their support in the years to come. If he didn't sign it, then he will be portrayed as being at odds with the Sejm/Senat and be shown to work in the same way as Kaczyński did, which hurts PiS.

I suspect that PO themselves weren't convinced by the bill, but supported it solely as a political move. There's only a few weeks to the election - and they can now hammer home the point that Duda is a puppet of Kaczyński, especially after he was caught making those late night visits. The opinion polls are saying the same story - that if both Kukiz and Korwin-Mikke fail to make it into the Sejm, then it will be very difficult for PiS to enter government. My gut feeling is that PO want to put a minority PiS into government and then refuse dissolution of the Sejm - the same trick worked very well in 2006, and Kaczyński's lust for power is so strong that they can exploit it.

Personally - I don't understand why Duda didn't just send it back to the Sejm with his amendments. There wouldn't have been enough time before the end of the legislative session, so it would have died a death there.

Have you read the bill? It does contain some very sensible provisions, such as requiring two independent experts to agree.

News / Polish President vetoes PO's dingbat gender law [173]


I think so too. It was the almost perfect setup - they had a law that wasn't introduced by the government and which was almost guaranteed to be vetoed so Duda could score political points. And he fell for it during an election campaign.


It's not about the issue, it's about the actual use of the veto. All PO have to do is remind people that he is against the work of the Sejm/Senat - and the voters will punish PiS. No-one will remember what was actually vetoed, only that it was.

News / Polish President vetoes PO's dingbat gender law [173]


So PiS supporters think. Duda went from approval ratings in the 50's to the mid 30's already, and he will sink further with such moves.


Yeah yeah. Usual PiS talk where they try and deflect their crimes by accusing others of committing them. There is absolutely no excuse for Duda to hide behind immunity - it's clear that he used public cash to make private cash, and he should waive his immunity so it can be investigated properly.

News / Polish President vetoes PO's dingbat gender law [173]


This is how democracy works. The bill itself wasn't a PO bill and wasn't introduced by a PO member - it was a bill introduced by a member of the Sejm, as was her right to do so. The fact that PO and others voted for it doesn't mean anything - it's quite common in parliamentary systems for such bills to be introduced and passed. Happens all the time in the US Congress, too.


Remember Polonius - Duda refused to waive his immunity so that he could be investigated properly over the recent accusations of blatant fraud involving taxpayers money. That, combined with several other scandals, shows how PiS is rather the party of corruption. For a party that claims to be a party of principle, they're remarkably unwilling to actually confront such scandals properly. Even Hofman is still working with PiS through a third party - shouldn't he be gone forever?

News / Polish President vetoes PO's dingbat gender law [173]


If he did, he would respect the democratic will of the Sejm and Senat.

As I said above, he walked into a PO trap - they knew that Duda wouldn't be able to stop himself from vetoing the law (perhaps that's why he was visiting Kaczyński the other night!) - and with it, they will now paint Duda as being out of touch with the will of the Polish people.

Politics is a game, and I'm honestly shocked that Duda fell for one of the most obvious traps in existence. If he didn't agree with it personally, he should have held a press conference and stated that while he opposes the bill on a personal level, he will sign it as he respects the authority of the Sejm and Senat to make the right choices. The aim is to make PiS less "scary" to the electorate - but this does nothing but show that they don't respect the legislative branch.


I don't know if the US model is better or worse. The influence of lobbyists is ridiculous there, as well as the influence on big corporations on candidates - but party discipline is far weaker, too. Hard to say, to be honest. Can you really imagine Kaczyński tolerating a random PiS MP voting with PO on social issues, however?

News / Polish President vetoes PO's dingbat gender law [173]

Polonius, do you think that PiS members have any choice in how they vote on things? Modern parliamentary democracies tend to work this way (the US is an exception, because party discipline is very weak in Congress). You rely on the party to get elected, hence you vote the way the party wants you to vote. May I remind you that Kaczyński has a habit of being re-elected leader without opposition - do you think that the members genuinely have a choice? Don't be bloody ridiculous.


Not really - Polish voters have always been turned off by Presidents interfering in the work of the Parliament.

Remember, the veto is supposed to be used to protect the Constitution as opposed to promoting one's personal agenda.

News / Polish President vetoes PO's dingbat gender law [173]


The problem is that the polls are all showing the same thing - PiS will not win a majority, and instead will face a united opposition that have every interest in keeping PiS well away from power.

Acts like this will not gain PiS any support, but will show Duda as someone who is willing to go against the will of the Sejm and Senat for his own political gain. Voters do not like that.

News / Polish President vetoes PO's dingbat gender law [173]


And Senate.

The thing is that the voters absolutely do not like the President imposing his own values on the decisions of the Parliament. For instance - Wałęsa lost the 1995 election for that reason, and Kwaśniewski won the 2000 election in a landslide for the fact that he showed he could work with AWS.

I'm honestly surprised that Duda chose to do this - it seems that the old PiS problem of not having competent political advisors came through again. He should have simply signed it and said that he respects the will of the Sejm and Senat - which would gain PiS a few votes from the centrists that they badly need.

News / Polish President vetoes PO's dingbat gender law [173]


I don't think you understand how the Polish people perceive the Presidency. They don't want to see vetoes made because of morals or political reasons - they want to see the veto used sparingly and only for issues that are clearly against the Constitution. Duda made the fatal mistake of using it for his own private reasons as opposed to constitutional reasons - which will hurt PiS as PO and others will now portray him as being petty like Kaczyński.


Except the opinion polls are showing that PiS are not anywhere near the numbers needed to win the election.


Exactly. Vetoing a law that enjoyed broad support will simply annoy the centrists.


Yes, as I outlined in the other thread, it seems that PiS stand very much for corruption and dishonesty.

Funny that Duda is so moral about this law but completely immoral when it comes to lining his own pockets.

News / Polish President vetoes PO's dingbat gender law [173]


It's everything about ratings. To veto a law that was passed by a large majority in the Sejm will be portrayed in the worst possible light by the government and the smaller parties - and PiS will suffer from it.

PO effectively have baited Duda with this law - and he fell for it.

News / Polish President vetoes PO's dingbat gender law [173]


Amazing. I thought he would've waited until after the election, but to use his veto already because he doesn't agree with PO legislation can only hurt PiS. I'm surprised he took the bait - the vote was won by over 100 votes, so to contradict the Sejm on such an issue is a terrible move.

Duda's opinion ratings were already only around 35% before this.

History / Time for Slavic Commonwealth around Poland as center [223]


You might find some common ground between Poles, Slovaks, Croatians and Macedonians, but I can't see anyone else taking part. Lithuania is too scared of Poland, the Czechs are far more Germanic culturally, the Russians and Serbs have their own friendship, Bulgarians are far too distant, Slovenians are too culturally Austrian, etc etc.

I could see Poland and Slovakia merging one day though...the language isn't a million miles apart, there's a common religion and way of life, there's no real historical animosity (most Poles aren't aware that Slovakia invaded Poland in 1939) and so on.

Language / Polish Language Exchange Thread [144]


Sure, come to Bunuba Cafe, ul. Szewska 20a on Thursdays from 7pm - there's our weekly language exchange meeting there, and plenty of people will help you with Polish there!