Party leader Janusz Palikot with Anna Grodzka on Thursday: photo -PAP/Pawel Supernak
“I do not know whether the proposal to replace Wanda Nowicka with Anna Grodzka in the position of Deputy Speaker of the Sejm [lower house of parliament] is not the result of a political calculation. In this way the Palikot Movement wants to provoke debate,” the ruling Civic Platform's Grzegorz Schetyna, a former speaker of parliament, said last night after the liberals formally adopted the 58 year-old MP, who had a sex change operation in 2010, as their candidate for the deputy speaker post.
Last week the Palikot Movement withdrew support for current deputy speaker, Wanda Nowicka, also a member of the liberal party, after it emerged that she had taken a large financial bonus for her work at the end of 2012 – a stance which went against the Palikot Movement's 'no bonuses' stand for public officials during a time of austerity.
The small, conservative United Poland party – which broke away from the largest opposition party in parliament, Law and Justice (PiS) after the 2011 election – has also put up its candidate, former interior minister Ludwig Dorn, for the post.
The decision on who will take up the post depends on the stance of the centre-right Civic Platform, the largest party in parliament.
After the 2011, it was agreed that the Palikot Movement, being the third largest party in the Sejm, should occupy one of the deputy speaker roles and leader of Civic Platform in parliament, Rafal Grupinski, said on Thursday that the matter would be addressed by his party at a meeting next week.
One of the more conservative Civic Platform MPs, Jacek Zalek, questioned whether the Palikot Movement – named after its leader, Janusz Palikot and which campaigns for a civic partnership law in Poland, gay rights and legalisation of soft drugs – should have a deputy speaker in the first place.
“The purpose of the Palikot Movement is about creating political disputes and divisions in society. Therefore, I believe that they do not deserve to be entrusted with the function,” the MP said.
Leading Law and Justice MP Mariusz Błaszczak went further, claiming the Palikot Movement was “a threat to democracy” and said his party would oppose Anna Grodzka's candidacy and recommend cutting the current five deputy speaker posts to four.
Janusz Palikot, however, said that “the Palikot Movement is the third largest force in parliament” and MPs who want to deprive the party of a deputy speaker should remind themselves of that fact.
The Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) says that it will retain its support for current deputy speaker Wanda Nowicka, a left wing feminist politician who has had links with SLD in the past.
Dariusz Joński, an MP for SLD said Anna Grodzka's candidacy would create an “unnecessary fuss”, a position shared by the junior coalition government partner, the Polish Peasants Party (PSL).
Anna Grodzka, originally Krzysztof Bęgowski, and currently the world's only transgendered MP, said on Thursday after her candidacy was confirmed that the position of deputy speaker would help in her fight for equality in a deeply Roman Catholic Poland.
“My mission has always been for people to be treated equally,” she said. (pg)
Source: PAP