President Komorowski steps on another banana

Some in Poland are comparing President Bronislaw Komorowski with gaffe-prone former US president George W. Bush after he heralded the forthcoming 3rd May national holiday in Poland as commemorating “the second modern constitution on the European continent.”

Poland’s Constitution of 3 May 1791 was Europe's first, however, and the second in the world after the US Constitution in 1787.

Poland is very proud of Europe’s first written constitution, preceding France's, declared in the same year several months later, and the day has been a national holiday since 1990 following the fall of communism.

The schoolboy error is even more remarkable when considering that Komorowski studied history when at Warsaw University.

The slip is the third such blunder in as many weeks by President Komorowski.

Another blunder came in the wake of the Japanese earthquake. The president made a spelling mistake when signing a condolence book expressing Poland’s grief at the loss of life.

Leader of the opposition Law and Justice party Jaroslaw Kaczynski said Komorowski should be forced to take a “spelling test”.

Komorowski made a similar blunder while attending a Palm Sunday festival last weekend, bungling the word ‘palm’ in Polish.

The latest blunders add to the growing list of slip ups by Komorowski.

When he was a presidential candidate last May he sent shockwaves through the Civic Platform-led government’s economic policy when he said that the country should join the Euro zone when the bloc started growing faster economically than Poland - which would postpone adopting the single currency for possibly decades - certainly far longer than Finance Minister Rostowski’s policy of taking up the euro in the next few years. (nh/pg)