According to Law and Justice leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski (right) Poland needs to make a clean break with its communist past by adopting his party’s model for a new constitution.
“The Republic of Poland is still being treated as a continuation of the [communist] People’s Republic of Poland. [We would like to break with the past but] that would cause a lot of legal and diplomatic problems. Nevertheless our Constitutional draft is strongly anti-totalitarian,” Kaczynski said, Friday, as he laid out the main points of the constitutional amendments Law and Justice wants to make.
The Law and Justice leader was introducing the new policy document, Constitution of the Fourth Republic which advocates strengthening the powers of the president. “The President should stand above all other powers. He should be a guard of the state’s independence and determine the state’s strategy,” Kaczynski said.
The opposition party proposes replacing the existing National Justice Board with a judiciary committee independent of the government and headed by the President, who would have the right to dismiss judges. The party also wants to combine the functions of the Prosecutor General and Justice Minister.
Law and Justice also wants to remove symbols and monuments which praise communist or Nazi rule from the public space. On the other hand, the party guarantees inviolability of religious and patriotic symbols.
Other amendments include a definition of marriage as a relationship between a man and woman, only.
Civic Platform’s counter-project
The Law and Justice project is often at odds with the amendments proposed by the ruling Civic Platform party. Instead of strengthening presidential powers, Civic Platform wants to diminish the role of the President on the political stage.
The radical changes in the Supreme Law of The Land proposed by Civic Platform include concentration of executive power in the hands of the Prime Minister, electing the nation’s President by a National Assembly and decreasing the number of members of the two chambers of parliament – the Sejm and the Senate. Civic Platform also wants to increase the role of the Constitutional Tribunal and limit the power of the presidential veto. (mg/pg/ss)