A man waves a Polish flag during an anti-government demonstration of opposition parties suporters and Committee for the Defence of Democracy movement (KOD) in Warsaw, yesterday.
Warsaw: Poland’s lower house of parliament lifted a temporary ban on media access yesterday in a gesture to defuse protests over the alleged undermining of democracy by the right-wing government, but opposition leaders said more needed to be done.
The clampdown on media access was among a raft of measures by the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party that critics say has eroded the independence of the media and the judiciary. Fears of an authoritarian drift in Poland have brought many thousands of protesters onto the streets over the past year and alarmed European Union partners.
Despite the removal of the media ban, opposition lawmakers extended their occupation of parliament’s debating chamber into a fifth day. They vowed to stay put until a debate and vote on the 2017 budget they say was held illegally in a side room on Friday to avoid protests and reporters is re-run with all MPs. Planned curbs on media access to the Sejm announced last week by PiS Speaker Marek Kuchcinski triggered demonstrations outside parliament and an occupation of the Sejm’s podium and the speaker’s chair by opposition MPs.
In response, Kuchcinski temporarily barred all reporters and moved the vote to a side room.
The Sejm’s press office said on Tuesday the ban had been scrapped but rules on media access were still likely to change. That was an allusion to an earlier proposal to reserve all recording of parliamentary sessions for five selected TV stations and limiting the number of journalists allowed in parliament would be limited to two per media outlet.
“We want, however, to assure that these changes will not be introduced without broad consultations and agreements with reporters,” the Sejm press office said in a statement.
The opposition welcomed the move but demanded the lower chamber also re-run the disputed budget vote. PiS officials replied that the vote was legal and would not be repeated. “PiS is retreating,” the leader of the liberal Nowoczesna party, Ryszard Petru, said on his Twitter account “Another debate on the budget is a key issue.”
It is the most serious political stand-off for years in Poland and the sharpest escalation in tension between opposition parties and the PiS since it won election in October 2015.
The eurosceptic PiS came to power promising more generous welfare benefits, stronger Roman Catholic and national values in public life and a tougher stance towards EU headquarters in Brussels and historical adversary Russia. The PiS government has since placed state media and prosecutors under its direct control, passed legislation making it more difficult for the constitutional court to issue verdicts and approved a bill critics say will limit freedom of assembly. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker put the question of Poland’s media restrictions on the agenda of Wednesday’s meeting of the EU’s executive.
