Warsaw - Poland's conservative Law and Justice (PiS)
government of Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski has drafted laws
intended to 'remove the symbols of communist rule from public life.'
If passed by parliament, the use of the names of communist leaders
for streets, schools, bridges, parks or even ships, planes and trains
would be banned, Poland's TVN24 news channel reported Thursday.
The draft would also annul all medals, orders and honorary titles
issued by communist authorities from 1944 until the collapse of
communism in 1989.
The proposed laws are in line with a PiS drive to remove the
vestiges of the communist system from life in Poland.
The ex-communist Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) parliamentary
opposition has voiced staunch opposition to the draft, arguing it was
up to municipal governments, not Warsaw, to decide about the names of
streets and character of local monuments.
Poland's highest Roman Catholic clergyman Primate Cardinal Jozef
Glemp, however, has expressed support for other PiS legislative plans
designed to lower the pensions of communist-era secret police agents.
'In the light of (communist-era) documents which are being
revealed...I have no doubt these people were doing evil,' Glemp was
quoted by the Dziennik daily.
Eighteen years after the collapse of communism in Poland, PiS
Prime Minister Kaczynski has vowed to 'de-communise' public life.
Controversial vetting legislation which took effect March 15 is
designed to screen as many as 700,000 public officials to determine
whether they cooperated with communist-era intelligence services.
Municipal officials, university professors, legal professionals,
journalists and corporate and bank chiefs born before 1972, must
declare whether they were secret police informants. Liars risk being
banned from their profession for up to a decade.
An earlier vetting law passed in 1997 requires senior politicians
and civil servants to disclose any covert ties with communist-era spy
services with a similar decade-long ban from public life for anyone
caught lying.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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