WARSAW, October 12, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A brand new far-left, pro-abortion political party led by vodka tycoon-provocateur Janusz Palikot soared to a third-place finish in Sunday’s Polish elections. Last month, Palikot told the Polish edition of Newsweek magazine that he wants to be the “new Messiah of the Left.”
“Life is beautiful. Everything is possible,” Palikot told a roaring crowd of supporters at his Warsaw campaign headquarters Sunday night. “It’s a great inspiration to know that in Poland there are millions of people who want a secular state, a civil and friendly state in which one’s faith is the private matter of each individual.”
In the country’s first parliamentary elections since the mysterious Smolensk plane crash took the life of President Lech Kaczynski, his wife, military leaders, and numerous high level government officials in April 2010, Palikot’s Movement (RP) received 10% of the vote and won 40 seats in the lower house of Poland’s parliament, the Sejm.
Join a Facebook page to end abortion here.
RP political goals include the end of religious education in state schools, the end of state subsidy of churches, the reversal of the restitution of church properties nationalized under communism, a ban on clergy at official state ceremonies, and the legalization of abortion on demand. They are also demanding free access to contraceptives, the recognition of homosexual “marriage” and the legalization of drugs.
Palikot, who has suggested that the late President Kaczynski was himself to blame for the catastrophic Smolensk plane crash, is known for courting controversy. During an April 2007 press conference, he wore a T-shirt saying “I am from the Democratic Left Alliance,” a pro-abortion political party, on the front, and “I am gay” on the back. At another press conference that same month, he produced a gun and a dildo. In January 2009, Palikot questioned in his blog whether former center-right prime minister and identical twin brother of the late president, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, was gay.
RP, which was only registered as a political party June 1, 2011, enabled the election of Wanda Nowicka, the head of Poland’s 4,000-member Federation for Women and Family Planning. Nowicka’s organization includes the Polish branch of the world’s largest abortion provider International Planned Parenthood Federation.
Nowicka had launched a criminal lawsuit against Polish pro-life leader Joanna Najfeld after Najfeld claimed she was on the “payroll” of the abortion and contraception industry in a February 2009 television debate. A judge ruled last month that Najfeld was “not guilty.”
RP also enabled the election of Poland’s first “transsexual” member of parliament (MP). Krzysztof Grodzki, who completed a male-to-female “sex change” in 2010 and calls himself “Anna.”
RP’s parliamentary representation will include the country’s first homosexual MP, Robert Biedron. Biedron, who was accused of assaulting a police officer in Warsaw last year, was an unsuccessful parliamentary candidate from the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) in 2005.
“This will be a modern, European-style left,” Biedron told the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper Monday. “Welcome: Come with us!”
The ranks of RP will include former priest and founder of the left-wing weekly Fakty i Mity, Roman Kotlinski, and assistant editor of the anti-clerical weekly NIE, Andrzej Rozenek. Between 2002-2003, Kotlinski led the anti-clerical Reason of the Polish Left party. Andrzej Rozenek was an unsuccessful SLD candidate in 1993.
Platforma Obywatelska (PO), described as “centre-right,” which Palikot left last year, obtained approximately 39% of the vote and won a plurality of seats, 209 out of 460, a loss of two seats. The former left-wing Polish People’s Party (PSL), which had previously been the junior partner in the governing coalition and won 8% and 28 seats Sunday, has said that it wishes to continue with the coalition agreement. Prior to Sunday’s vote, Tusk had ruled out cooperating with Palikot.
The conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, took around 29% of the vote and 157 seats.
In addition to PO, PiS, RP, and PSL parliamentary representation, Poland’s new Sejm will include 27 SLD members and 1 member from the German Minority party.
Poland’s new parliament appears to include at least 130 members who recently voted for an unsuccessful ban on all abortions or who were identified as pro-life by the PRO Foundation. Pro-life members include many from the main opposition PiS, as well as some from the PO-PSL coalition.
The unsuccessful ban received 186 votes in August.
Returning parliamentarians who voted against the ban on all abortions include many from the prime minister’s PO party and some SLD members. Polish media report that PO leader Donald Tusk will appoint an opponent of the ban on all abortions, Health Minister Ewa Kopacz, as parliamentary speaker.