Opposition files no-confidence motion against government
Oppositionist Civic Platform (PO) on Friday filed a no-confidence motion in Poland's Mateusz Morawiecki government over a recent corruption scandal around the finance-regulating Financial Supervision Authority (KNF).
PO's caucus leader Sławomir Neumann said the motion was a response to the way the government was dealing with the affair, and voiced hope that it will induce Poland's ruling party Law and Justice (PiS) to recall the Morawiecki team. Neumann added that the motion was also dicated by instances of political corruption by PiS in local parliaments.
Neumann said that in PO's opinion the situation deprived Morawiecki of any moral legitimacy to head the Polish government.
"The motion is ready (...), we've got the signatures and the substantiation. In our opinion Prime Minister Morawiecki has absolutely no moral right to head the government (...), because corruption has become this government's hallmark," Neumann told a press conference in the Sejm (lower house).
In the event of the motion going through, PO's candidate for prime minister will be party leader Grzegorz Schetyna.
Last week the Gazeta Wyborcza national daily wrote that KNF head Marek Chrzanowski made an approximately PLN 40 million (EUR 9.3 million) proposal to Getin Noble Bank controlling shareholder Leszek Czarnecki last March. Chrzanowski was reportedly taped suggesting that the banker should hire a specific lawyer whose wages would be tied to the bank's financial standing, in return for a "favourable" approach from the KNF and central bank (NBP) to the restructuring of Czarnecki's banks, the daily wrote. According to the newspaper, the tapes were delivered to prosecutors by Czarnecki himself.
Inquiries into the affair are underway, Chrzanowski has since resigned his post and has been replaced by Jacek Jastrzębski, a former legal section head at the state-owned PKO BP bank. (PAP)
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