Duda’s presidential campaign accuses rival of hate speech

President Andrzej Duda’s campaign leader has accused his biggest rival, the opposition presidential candidate from Civic Platform (PO), of promoting hate speech in a row that has set off a debate over freedom of speech in Poland.

Duda’s campaign chief, Małgorzata Turczynowicz-Kieryłło, said to TVP Info that “the discretion over the using freedom of speech can lead to threats, even threats to interests which are important to the state.”

Turczynowicz-Kieryłło said that she had outlined the boundaries which cannot be crossed when she defended national interests. She believed that if one crossed those boundaries, then they did not act in public or the state’s interest.

PO presidential candidate Małgorzata Kidawa-Błońska said that the words of Turczynowicz-Kieryłło were “an announcement of introducing censorship,” and claimed that whoever states that freedom of speech is wrong in certain circumstances is on the wrong side of the issue.