Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski has confirmed that he plans to put a portrait of Bronislaw Komorowski in every Polish embassy around the world once he is sworn in as president on August 6.

“A new president means new traditions,” Minister Sikorski told Przegląd magazine and confirmed the plan on TVP public television last night, saying the idea came to him during a visit to Afghanistan.

“The US, Great Britain, Germany, Spain and France – all the countries that Poland likes being compared to, present the image of the head of state in public places, especially in embassies,” said Sikorski.

The weekly Przeglad, which revealed the news, reminds that the practice of hanging portraits of the head of state has a long communist tradition - as part of the ‘cult of personality’ which grew during Stalinist times - but this was abandoned by Edward Gierek, the First Secretary of the Polish United Worker’s Party in 1971.

Politicians from opposition parties are not so keen on the idea, however. “An image of the supreme authority [of the head of state] is promoted in Belarus, for example. But for Poles, this si an alien tradition,” says Tadeusz Iwiński MP for the Democratic Left Alliance.

“Worshiping a portrait of President will not serve the office well but exposes the office and the new president to ridicule,” said Paweł Kowal from the Law and Justoce party. (pg/mg)

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