Polish Elections To Be Overturned
Classified Polnews
Over 200 elected Polish Government officials will be ousted from office and communities forced to hold new elections if Poland's Deputy Prime Minister Ludwik Dorn has his way.
Poland
As a result of failing to file financial statements within thirty days of being elected, under the latest change to the election law hastily rammed through the Polish Parliament by the President's party just prior to last fall's elections, officials can lose their mandates to govern.
Though Dorn says the law is clear, others disagree, and some, including the President Lech Kaczynski and his brother, Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski are not so sure.
The Kaczynski's are holding back with their decisions and awaiting legal advice.
Compounding the confusion are the circumstances of the President of Warsaw. She filed her husband's financial statement within the term specified by one law but two days late by the terms of a second law.
Because the first law, amended by the second law, still stands, disputes have arisen about how they should be enforced, if they should be enforced at all. Some want the matter referred to the Constitutional Tribunal.
And in Gronkiewicz-Walcz's case, she claims that the laws do not apply to her husband's financial statement because he did not have a business registered in Warsaw. But once again, there are disputes over how the laws should be read. See Warsaw Poland's President Contests Loss Of Mandate
Gronkiewicz-Walcz now claims that the Law And Justice party wants her fired because of information she has about what was done under her predecessors, President Lech Kaczynski and Former Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz. The information surfaced in an audit that she thinks the Law And Justice Party does not want her to make public.
There are calls for solving the problem by amending the law. The Peasant's Party wants it amended, with provisions made retroactive, to give six months to file the statements.
New elections will be very expensive to the already strained budget.
