Poland's Conservative Law and Order (PiS) MK Dominik Tarczyński spoke with television journalist Tim Sebastian on Wednesday on a variety of issues, from the state of the Polish health service as it deals with the coronavirus outbreak to women’s rights to the upcoming presidential elections. During the interview, he said that Poland is being kept "great and Christian."
PiS is the ruling party in the country at the moment and pushed to hold the presidential elections as planned despite the virus outbreak, yet after massive pressure from many sectors in Polish society, including the church, they agreed to postpone them to early July.
When confronted by Sebastian over how the Catholic church, which is a strong supporter of PiS, turned against them on this issue, the Polish politician responded by saying that he thinks it is very interesting that when abortions are discussed nobody thinks to mention the Catholic point of view and yet it is somehow very important when elections are mentioned. “We listen to all parts of Polish society,” he said, bishops included, “but we are a sovereign nation.”
While various options were considered, among them voting via mail, online voting, and voting along age groups with the intention to protect the elderly, it was eventually decided to protect lives from possible infection and postpone the vote.
When discussing the Polish health service, Tarczyński, speaking in English, called coronavirus “the Chinese virus” and said that as far as he is aware nobody in the world, not just Poland, was ready for it as it is a unique historical event.
Sebastian also slammed Tarczyński for the amount of control his party currently has in public media after firing reporters and appointing new heads of sections on Polish television and radio — a move that led to Polish social media to be filled with spoofs containing a presenter from North Korean television with Polish captions about current events, hinting that state media is about as free as the one in North Korea.Tarczyński said that he himself was fired by Civic Platform (PO) from his position as TVP3 Kielce director when it was in power. Meaning that such is the way of the world.
“We have only one public channel,” he said. “Public money is part of the budget of the government since 1990,” when Poland changed from a Socialist country to a democracy. Sebastian argued that the funding was used to morph the public service into a “propaganda mouthpiece.” Tarczyński called it Fake News and claimed these are simply attacks on Poland which are like the attacks on Hungary and US President Donald Trump, which he said are also not founded in reality.
Sebastian argued that a new law which enables the firing of judges is an attempt to muzzle judicial review. Tarczyński argued that it is not possible that judges in Poland “cannot be charged with anything, not even if they steal money and are caught on camera doing it.” He then further explained that, as he sees it, the job of the current government is to “clean up post-communist courts,” meaning to remove judges tainted by taking part in the socialist system.
Tarczyński claimed that there is a double standard being implemented, meaning that when judges speak out against the government, they claim they are defending the law and doing their duty, yet when the elected government is doing “what the Polish people want” they are in the wrong. “They [the judges] are unelected and they want to rule,” he said.
When Sebastian pointed out the great majority of Socialist-era judges were removed in the 1990’s he responded with “what about the 19 percent which are left?”“Not even one should be there,” he said. “This is what we promised the Polish people.”He claimed his government is only targeting “communist judges”, not all judges. He added that he doesn’t care about George Soros. “I care about Poles.”
Tarczyński kept on using “communism” to describe the Polish system even though Poland, being an independent nation, was never a part of the USSR and was a socialist country.
In regard to LGBT groups and their concerns over a recent wave of hate campaign which attempted to create “LGBT free zones” he argued that the issue is “LGBT ideology” and that Poland is a free country where people can live as they like. “Poland is safe and clean,” he said, “we haven’t had one terrorist attack because of our immigration policy,” meaning Poland did not accept refugees from Syria.He added that he witnessed discussions in the EU parliament about Islamic law being introduced to Europe and that, as far as he is concerned, “we are trying to keep Poland great and Christian.”
When Sebastian claimed Poland only has one shelter for women who are survivors of domestic violence he claimed there are “hundreds of shelters” operated by the Church and that he had “been there myself.”