2024-10-16 14:51 update: 2024-10-16, 14:53
Photo PAP/Marcin Obara
One year ago, the nation united and removed bad actors from power, effectively saying no to corruption in government, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said.
Tusk spoke in the Sejm, lower house of Polish parliament, on Wednesday, following a speech given minutes earlier by President Andrzej Duda on the anniversary of the general elections of October 15, 2023.
Tusk said that last year, something "sacred" happened during the general vote. "The nation united, said 'enough with the evil' and removed a bad government from power," he told the parliamentarians.
"People and their votes are more important than political declarations of state officials and party functionaries," Tusk said. He added that it was the voters who brought about a fundamental change in the country by participating in parliamentary elections.
"On October 15, Poles said unanimously that they had had enough of this party's rule, of the party that also placed the president in the Presidential Palace," Tusk said.
His words met with outcries from MPs of the ex-ruling Law and Justice (PiS), now in parliamentary opposition, who began to leave the Sejm's chamber at that point.
"They wanted you to go, then go," Tusk addressed the exiting parliamentarians.
October 15 marks the one-year anniversary of the parliamentary elections which, after eight years of PiS rule, resulted in a coalition government formed by Poland's new pro-European Union administration, comprised of the Civic Coalition (KO), The New Left, and The Third Way.
Duda was the presidential candidate for PiS during the presidential election in May 2015. (PAP)
wpb/mf
