Political newcomer Kukiz keen to change constitition

Paweł Kukiz, who won a fifth of the votes in the first round of May’s presidential election, wants to change the Polish constitution if he can win enough votes in the forthcoming general election.

Speaking with daily Rzeczpospolita, veteran rock star Kukiz said he believes that opposition party Law and Justice, which is currently topping opinion polls, would join forces in such a bid.

Kukiz stressed that he wants to strengthen the executive powers of the president.

However, on the subject of cutting state funding for political parties, one of the key issues in a forthcoming referendum, Kukiz said he is prepared to back the current model for a further four years.

Asked whether he feels it is too late to remove officials with a communist past from public life, he replied that 26 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the question of judgement is now in God’s hands.

However, he argued that “people who have the potential to be decent are still susceptible because they did not make confessions about their past.”

Correspondingly, Kukiz stressed that he wants his candidates to be between 25 and 45, and thus too young to have been entangled in the pre-1989 system.

Nevertheless, he acknowledged that this is not “an iron rule” and that he is still prepared to run candidates from an unlikely mixture of affiliations.

These include former presidential candidate of the Democratic Left Alliance Magdalena Ogórek, as well as Polish nationalists (also presidential candidates) Marian Kowalski and Grzegorz Braun.

When reminded that the latter had been accused of anti-semitism, Kukiz claimed that he finds anti-semitic views offensive.

He meanwhile said that there is a need “to consolidate a second Poland abroad,” alluding to the millions of immigrants.

“We need to do everything to create a similar lobby abroad to what the Jews have,” he said.