Janusz Palikot; photo - PR

Prominent Civic Platform politician Janusz Palikot announced on Saturday that he will be leaving the ruling party on 6 December and setting up his own, more liberal political movement.

Palikot, a long time maverick within the christian-democrat Civic Platform - whose often outspoken criticisms of the Kaczynski brothers and opposition Law and Justice party have often angered many in his own party - says he intends renounce his membership and resign his parliamentary seat the day after the second round of local government elections.

Addressing some 3,000 people in Warsaw’s Congress Hall on Saturday, Palikot - who has criticised the Civic Platform government for being too conservative on social issues, said that one of his priorities is the total separation of Church from state.

In his view, there is no clear division between the Church and state in Poland. His new Movement for a Modern Poland, he says, wants to fight with what he describes as ‘the imperialism of the Church’.

The policies of the new group include an end of religious instruction in schools and of state subsidies for church institutions, free access to contraceptives and registration of same-sex partnerships.

Civic Platform MP Małgorzata Kidawa-Błońska said that Palikot’s policy of further separation between Church and State shows that he has not read Poland’s Constitution properly, in which “there is already operation separation” between the two.

Law and Justice MP Zbigniew Girzynski says that Palikot’s resignation from his party “is complete proof of the lack of ideological coherence” within the centre-right Civic Platform.

Government spokesman Pawel Gras said that Palikot’s resignation of his seat in Parliament was “honourable” and that Civic Platform would have choose a new head of the Lublin constituency, which he represents, before 6 December.

According to a poll by the Homo Homini Institute for Polish Radio, Janusz Palikot’s grouping could count on four percent support if it decided to run in the parliamentary elections.

Civic Platform are on 36 percent of support in the country, Law and Justice on just under 28 percent, Democratic Left Alliance on 15 percent and the junior coalition partner, the Polish Peasant‘s Party on 5.4 percent. (pg/mk)

Source: PAP/IAR