Polish President vetoes PO's dingbat gender law

It is most obvious that in such a most conservative society such as Poland, such a project cannot be accepted so why in the world do MP's waste time and also taxpayers' money to discuss things that at least 99.99% of the population don't care about? It beats me. Can't politicians be concerned about issues concerning the huge majority of the population?

Not only they are irresponsible and also they are stupid since Duda's veto on such bills will help him and PiS.

PO are even dumber that what I had thought. I don't like PiS either but PO and their allies are getting dumber and dumber and give the idea that they are getting desperate as Oct. 25 gets near.

I can't stand PiS but now to me PO have become a mere joke...

Next week, what are they going to discuss (at taxpayer's expenses)? Cats' haircuts? The color of the snow?

PS: it's just like with their stupid (and very expensive ;)) referendum, couldn't they have known that people would not vote? It beats me to realize how stupid they are.

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.

Just wondering, who on earth thought up the gender whim act if it wasn't PO and how on earth did it pass? Did MPs suddenly begin fantasising they were in Sweden or what? Even if the gender law was ethically neutral which it isn't, it is a mater of interest to such a tiny subfraciton of society that it's a wonder it was passed. Probably Palikot and his nutters had something to do with it.

@Delph: since at least 99.99% of Polish population not concerned and most probably against, Duda's veto can only be seen by Polish voters as common sense. If the Parliament for instance voted to declare war to ... Luxemburg, according to you, the President (whoever he is) should approve.

Gender is not an issue in Polish society so why in the world wasting time and public money to discuss it?

There are (just 1 example) millions of Poles working on garbage contracts but amazingly, MPs are not concerned about that.

MPs show once more than they are completely disconnected from Polish reality and as a result fewer than 50% of Poles bother voting.

Why not read the proposed bill? It's still early.

@delphiandomine
Do not delude yourself. I know what people say in the streets - in the center of Warsaw, which is a bastion of the PO.

If PO and their buddies want to hurt Duda and PiS, they need to introduce topics that most Poles favor and not things at least 99.99% including MPs are not concerned about. With topics such as "gender", they show that they are completely disconnected from Polish voters' concern and they help PiS....

A very sensible move, veto !

Yes, now I recall -- it was Bejgowski turned Grordzka that submitted the proposal. Fair enough! The question is how on earth did she did get the Sejm to support it. It was the height of the summer holiday season, maybe most MPs were dreaming of getting away form it all and hastily voted to be done with it ASAP. Maybe the upały (heat wave) addled a few MP brains. What is your explanation? You know using the gender whim thing in a Polish election campaign would have been disastrous.

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.

If your evalaution is correct, it is all so horribly macchiavelian! And it only reaffirms the correctness of my lifelong resolve never to enter politics -- a dirty business whose players are mainly ego-trippers, greedy bastards and crooks.

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.

What do Grodzka-style Thai chop jobs have to do with homosexuals? The quesiton is what is the percentage of transgender types in OPoladn: .0002%? And how tiny, narrow and unusual groups should special laws be passed for? What about autistic kleptomaniacs, one-legged rugby players or blind street musicians?

@Pol: seriously! Any idea of how many transgenders in Poland (or in any other country)?

Do you know? And should special laws be enacted for even the tiniest minorities?


This from wikipedia: Wiarygodne dane na temat częstości występowania transseksualizmu pochodzą z krajów Europy - jest ona szacowana na 1 na 30 tys. u osób płci męskiej oraz na 1 na 100 tys. u osób płci żeńskiej[2].

What percentage or millage would that be? Was never good at maths.

@Pol: thanks for search! I am lousy at maths too but I can figure in a country like Poland with respect to its adult population, it may mean a few hundred people at very most.

If someone has an exact number, feel free! :)

In 18 years of visiting and living in Poland I have met one transgender person. She was nice enough I guess.

Absolutely a plague on both their houses - what we should be arguing about are taxes, infrastructure, quality of the labor market, defense and Russia, improving education, improving pensions. PO don't seem to be able to engage on those subjects on their own terms - Kopacz is a very poor communicator and does not seem to be making a connection to ordinary Poles who should be their natural supporters.

Same about me: I've met one transgender in Poland ...... A. Grodzka herself. I admire her courage because not easy.

"Absolutely a plague on both their houses...natural supporters" = 100% agreed!

LOL ! This is PO full flavor, I won't be surprised If they also invented the whole "golden train" crap.

Anyone know whether what Duda's time limit was for signing of vetoing the gender act? Could he have awaited until after the election?

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.

What about the Constitutional Tribunal route -- that too would have delayed things until after the election?
All in all things are hotting up. The homo priest at the Vatican indirectly hurts PiS. But the coal miners' protests are aimed against the governing PO.

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...

It's all just pure electioneering not worth a hill of beans to use an old-fashion American expresion.


The Sejm failed to put the presidential veto to a vote. According to TVPI, PO was afraid PSL would not proivde enough votes and the veto would not get toppled. That would have hurt PO's image in the election mode.

It's good they didn't. The gender whim law would have provided a sneaky backdoor route leading to same-sex marriage. The law stated that trannies are free to marry anyone of whatever gender.

@delphiandomine
During parliament vote over veto it's no allowed to introduce improvements to the law. Speaker of parliament promised vote over this veto today, But PO was afraid that they would be fail. It should be 3/5 members of parliament to vote against weto and PSL (Polish Peasant Party) began to break out of the goverment coalition. There will be parliament election in 2 weeks and PSL's electorate does not like such inventions as this law. Lost in the vote would be much worse for PO than non-voting.

And today was the last session of this parliament. Laws that have not gone through the full legislative process (the last step is the president's signature) will go to the trash. So there wasn't this law.

Poland's getting dragged to 21 century, kicking and screaming. :)

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.

The Polish nation has gained more than just a bit by rejecting one of the off-the-wall legislative concoctions of the freak faction. After PiS win power they will be able to start dismantling such leftist-libertine laws such as legalised testube babies and legitmisation of shack-up arrangements. Those who delight in the abnormal and freaky are free to move to Holland or Sweden or other places where freakiness is the norm. Poland thankfully will remain "SEMPER FIDELIS"!

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

Duda is conservatist. People who chose him don't expect him to introduction of any "gender". They rather expect him to veto in such situations - there is no reason to loose something by Duda.

In fact, PO took this game badly. The first they they announced in all media that if the president would deliver veto until Thursday it would be voting on Friday.Maybe they wished that the president sent the papers with veto on Friday - they would have a good excuse to complain about the president, and not to vote. But the president sent papers on Monday so PO had to make almost miracles in order not to do this voting