Wałęsa wants referendum on shortening Polish Parliament's term
PR dla Zagranicy
Nick Hodge
14.12.2015 18:19
Former president of Poland Lech Wałęsa has said a referendum should be held on whether the four-year term of the current Polish Parliament should be shortened.
Lech Walęsa. Photo: wikimedia commons/Stowarzyszenia SIEMACHA
Wałęsa, who in the 1980s led the Solidarity trade union that helped defeat the communist regime, made the comments in the wake of protests and counter-protests over the weekend.
Adversaries and supporters of the Law and Justice party, which won the 25 October general election, gathered in Warsaw and elsewhere in reaction to the ongoing row about the appointment of judges to Poland's Constitutional Tribunal.
“It [Law and Justice's term in office] will lead to a lot of misfortune, it will end badly, there will be fights, leading to civil war,” Wałęsa claimed in an interview with Radio Zet.
He argued that “to avoid that you have to prepare structurally and organizationally, and you have to start collecting signatures for a referendum.”
Meanwhile, Jarosław Kaczyński, head of the Law and Justice party, has said that changes to the Constitutional Court are aimed at tackling cronyism. (nh/pk)