Zbigniew Ziobro, Poland’s justice minister and public prosecutor general, has asked the Constitutional Court to ban the Communist Party of Poland (KPP) on grounds that the party’s aims and activities being are inconsistent with the Polish constitution.
“The actions… were undertaken at the request of citizens. In the letters addressed to the prosecutor’s office, they indicated that the KPP, among other things, referred in its program and practices to totalitarian methods and practices of communism, which were inconsistent with the Polish Constitution,” reads the statement by the National Prosecutor’s Office.
Poland’s constitution forbids political parties to aspire to promote totalitarian ideologies such as communism, Nazism and fascism. The constitution also forbids the existence of political parties which promote racial hatred, envisage the use of force in attaining power or which attempt to organize in a clandestine fashion.
The KPP is charged with condoning violence used by communist regimes, calling for revolution and the overthrow of both democracy and private property. The public prosecutor also notes in his statement that Poland as a country had direct experiences with the totalitarian nature of communism.
It was also emphasized that “the analysis carried out by the National Prosecutor’s Office showed that KPP members question the democratic order in Poland” and that “the goals of the party are identical to the goals of other communist parties exercising totalitarian power in communist states of the 20th century”.
According to the Ziobro, KPP members “are campaigning directly for a revolution similar to the October Revolution in Russia, after which the Bolsheviks took power. The goal is not only to seize power, but also nationalization and collectivization through the use of force”. It was also emphasized that “the KPP’s program expresses support for the political system of the Soviet Union” and “communist criminals such as Joseph Stalin and Felix Dzerzhinsky are also glorified.”
“For this reason, the public prosecutor general decided that both the aims and activities of the KPP must be considered unconstitutional, and its functioning should be terminated,” reads the statement.
The KPP is a communist party founded in 2002 claiming to be the historical and ideological heir of the pre-WWII Communist Party of Poland. They also refer to the traditions of the Soviet backed Polish Worker’s Party (PPR) which operated between 1942 and 1948, and partly of the Polish United Worker’s Party (PZPR), which operated between 1948 and 1989.
Title image: Members of the KPP demonstrate on Warsaw’s street, source: Facebook, KP.
