Polish Leader Says Opposition Protest a ‘Coup Bid’

(AFP) – The head of Poland’s ruling conservatives Jaroslaw Kaczynski on Tuesday denounced as a “coup bid” a rolling opposition sit-in protest in parliament that compromised a budget vote.

Polish opposition lawmakers launched their protest on December 16 and plan to stay put until at least January 11, when the new session of parliament opens.

Parliament had to hold a vote on next year’s budget in another part of the building because of the opposition takeover of the main chamber.

The opposition claimed the budget was therefore approved illegally and has called for a re-run of the vote.

“We have to call a spade a spade: it was an attempted coup,” Kaczynski, the head of the governing Law and Justice (PiS) party told wSieci, a right-leaning weekly.

“It was a serious attempt at trying to paralyse the government by force in an undemocratic manner,” he said.

“It was founded on the idea that we would not be able to adopt the budget,” he said, accusing some media groups of having “directly participated in the coup bid.”

The protestors launched the action to denounce what they call the government’s anti-democratic actions including media restrictions and controversial changes to the constitutional court.