Palikot - has he gone too far, this time?

Following maverick Civic Platform MP Janusz Palikot wondering publicly whether the late president Lech Kaczynski was sober when he stepped on board the doomed TU 154 which crashed in Smolensk, an MEP has called for his dismissal from the party.

MEP Filip Kaczmarek has announced that he will file a motion to kick the controversial MP out of Civic Platform.

“Enough! Palikot has gone beyond the pale,” Kaczmarek writes on his blog. In his opinion, Palikot is harming the governing Civic Platform’s image and violates the party’s statute.

“Palikot’s recent statements are unethical and disgraceful,” writes Kaczmarek.

Janusz Palikot angered many when he said it should be investigated whether President Kaczynski was under the influence of alcohol on the day of the disaster and whether blood samples were collected from his body. He also wondered why Lech Kaczynski was 25-minutes late for the plane which took off from a Warsaw airport on the morning of April 10; and if the president applied pressure on the pilot forcing him to land in spite of bad weather conditions.

Palikot claims that until all these questions are answered, Lech’s twin brother Jaroslaw Kaczynski – who narrowly lost to Civic Platform’s Bronislaw Komorowski in the elections last weekend – should refrain from using the Smolensk tragedy for political purposes.

“We cannot allow Jaroslaw Kaczynski to make a hero and a martyr of his brother Lech Kaczynski, who is responsible for the death of dozens of people and has blood of the crash victims on his hands,” he claimed.

The statement about the sobriety of the late president is the latest in a long list of statements Palikot has made about Lech Kaczynski, which have outraged many, even his own party. Last year, when Lech Kaczynski was still alive, Palikot demanded that the head of state release his medical records so it could assterianed whether he was an alcoholic, or not.

In March, Palikot criticised one of the candidates in the Civic Platform primaries for the presidential election when he said that if Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski became president it would be like having a “Civic Platform/Law and Justice coalition” as head of state - meaning Sikorski was too conservative to be their candidate. He was reprimanded by top party officials, consequently.

But Kaczmarek maintains that Civic Platfrom has so far been too permissive towards Palikot and the punishments that it imposed on the MP did not manage to discipline him.  (mg/pg)

Source: PAP