Opposition parties will not block next parliamentary sitting: party leader

Opposition MPs have been staging a sit-in protest in the plenary hall of the parliament since 16 December over a disputed vote on the 2017 budget bill.

Speaking to journalists following a meeting on Monday, PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński said the parties agreed that the year’s first sitting on 11 January will be held in the plenary hall, and opposition MPs will not occupy the rostrum.

However, the leader of the Nowoczesna party, Ryszard Petru, said that the sit-in protest would continue.

The meeting on Monday was held without the participation of the largest opposition party, Civic Platform, whose leader, Grzegorz Schetyna, declined to take part.

Kaczyński said that Schetyna was invited to attend a second meeting set to be held on Tuesday.

The Civic Platform and Nowoczesna opposition parties had previously said they would occupy the plenary hall until a key vote on the 2017 budget is repeated, but PiS insists there were no irregularities in the vote, which was held in an ancillary hall with little to no media presence.

PiS’s Kazyński on Monday said that the representatives of Nowoczesna announced that they would consult the issue of the disputed vote with Poland’s top court.

“The representatives of one party, perhaps two – it’s hard to tell – decided that they will send the final draft of the budget bill to the Constitutional Tribunal, which from our point of view is something we find hard to accept,” Kaczyński said.

The head of the Constitutional Tribunal is a PiS nominee who recently took on the job. (rg)