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Friday, May 09, 2014

Meet the man who wants to blow up the European parliament

In our recent briefing ahead of the European elections, we estimated that anti-EU, protest and anti-establishment parties of various forms are set to increase their share of the vote and their number of seats in the European parliament.

One such party building up some impressive momentum as polling day approaches is the Polish Congress of the New Right, led by the mega-eccentric, bow-tie aficionado 71-year old Janusz Korwin-Mikke. A few weeks ago the party was polling at 2/3% but in recent polls the party has consistently been at or above the 5% minimum threshold, a result which would give it 3 MEPs.

The party is an odd mix of extreme libertarians and nationalists and Korwin-Mikke himself has been around Polish politics since the fall of Communism without much success. Unlike most parties in Poland, the New Right is strongly anti-EU with Korwin-Mikke describing the Commission as "bastards and Communists", and saying that:
"We are going to the European Parliament to show what a nonsensical institution it is. It's not possible to achieve anything sensible there".
In a speech a couple of weeks ago Korwin-Mikke said that the party would go into the parliament in order to detonate a bomb inside it, while one of his MEP candidates claimed that "the European Parliament is a brothel, a role for which it is ideally suited". On the surface, the party bears many similarities to UKIP and the party may want to join UKIP's EFD group in the EP. However, such an alliance is unlikely given that Korwin-Mikke's views make former UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom appear like Polly Toynbee. For example, his long-standing view is that women should not have the right to vote as they do not "understand politics" and tend to vote for pro-welfare parties.

However, even the party does make it into the European parliament - Polish polls have proved notoriously unreliable in the past - it will not have any wider implications for Poland's membership of the EU where support is among the highest in the whole EU. It could make plenary sessions in Brussels and Strasbourg more interesting though....

5 comments:

Rik said...

1. I hope he registered his head, real potential to replace Guy. Guy masks have come a bit at the end of their lifecycle I fear.
A mask with a bow tie. Never seen before. Lets call it a blow tie, with prints of 1900 Anarchist bombs on the fabric. Moustache is great as well btw.

2. Why limit yourself to parliament I would say. And which one btw or both? One can not be racist and pick only one I would say. They really deserve equal treatment. Undoubtedly the Human Rights Court will agree with that.

Get people really involved in the EP election.
Next to voting for a candidate why not ask people which European City they like Mr Putin to nuke:
a) Berlin
b) Frankfurt
c) Paris
d) Brussels
e) Luxembourg
f) Strasbourg
g) Greece (albeit not a city).
With the present candidates it is a pure negative choice, the least worst candidate. Here however people can make a choice between several attractive alternatives.
I ask some of the frequent posters here and communis opinio was Brussels. Providing of course the Grafin Ashton von Brussel zum Chernobyl was not making a mess of the relations with some other major country somewhere else.
But other people might have other views. I would be great to have Europe wide consensus on this one. I only have to inform them that if one of the other cities is chosen, the election has to be done again (according to EU standard procedure).

If this works one could go for a similar approach with some (or all of the candidates and Honchos:
a) Guillotine
b) Firingsquad
c) Electric chair
d) Go Medieval (the favourite with the bookies).
This would make people feel so much more involved with Europe.

3. Like the idea of excluding women btw. However it has to be both active and passive voting right. Plus extend it to civil servants as well (no more women unless for bringing coffee or cleaning the toilets).
No more non sense discussions about quota to start with.
Roughly half of the incompetents taken care of. Just think what a cut on the budget this means.
And Ms Reding can full time work on IP campaigns (paid for by the generous (lump sum) EU allowance of course).
A win-win-win.

In a nutshell a brilliant new addition to the European family.

Anonymous said...

Okay, but I'm struggling to see how is this guy worse than say Barroroso or the guy named Guy.

Lukasz Dywicki said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lukasz Dywicki said...

Wait a moment before repeating all the lies produced by mass media in Poland.

First of all this guy is royalist who opts for establishing monarchy in Poland, however he says with current state it is inpossible. So he doesn't want to revoke vote possibility from woman but from everyone. From other hand he would like to keep voting on local level.
Naming these people "extreme libertarians and nationalists" is very unfair. Could you please elaborate what does it means to be extreme nationalist first?
Second thing about Parlament - this comes from fact that EU Parlament can not change the law. It's a discussion club which makes opinions about commissioners proposals. Since few years it might refuse it but as life shows - commisioners usually founds a way to walk around parlament "veto".

If you really want to start writing about this guy you should start from fact that he caused fail of government in 90s when he proposed to publish list of communist collaborators from years 1945-1992. Also he made proposal to include in Polish constitution paragraph denying having a public debt. Of course his ideas was refused and himself was banned from politics.

Anonymous said...

Exactly, and what's more JKM is probably one of the few honest politicians in Polish politics with his views unchanged for more than twenty years now.