Poland’s ruling party wants to ask voters in a referendum whether they support the adoption of “thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa” as part of the plan in the European Union, the prime minister said on Sunday, as his conservative party tries to retain power in the parliamentary elections in October, Associated Press reported, quoted by BTA.
Mateusz Moravecki announced the referendum issue in a new video posted on social media. It says that his party “Law and Justice” seeks to use migration in its election campaign – a tactic that helped her take power in 2015.
Poland hosts more than one million Ukrainian refugees, who are mostly white and Christian, but officials have long made it clear that they view Muslims and other people of different cultures as a threat to the country’s cultural identity and security.
In June, EU interior ministers approved a plan to share responsibility for migrants entering Europe without authorization, at the heart of one of the bloc’s longest-running political crises.
The Polish government wants to hold the referendum alongside parliamentary elections scheduled for October 15. Morawiecki stated that the question would read: “Do you support the admission of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa under the forced relocation mechanism imposed by the European bureaucracy?”.
The video announcing the issue features scenes of burning cars and other street violence in Western Europe. A black man licks a huge knife in apparent anticipation of committing a crime. Then the party leader Jaroslav Kaczynski says: “Do you want this to happen in Poland too? Do you want to stop being masters of your own country?”
In recent days, leaders have announced two other issues. One asks voters about their opinion on the privatization of state-owned enterprises, and the other will ask them if they support raising the retirement age, which Law and Justice has reduced to 60 for women and 65 for men.
The questions are designed to portray the opposition party “Civic Platform” as a threat to the interests of PolesAP points out.
The video is aimed directly at the leader of the “Civil Platform” Donald Tusk, former president of the European Council. “Tusk is the biggest threat to our security, he is the biggest threat to Poland’s security,” Morawiecki said. “Let’s not allow Tusk – as an emissary of the Brussels elite – to destroy security in Poland”.
The European asylum system collapsed eight years ago after more than one million people entered the bloc – most of them fleeing the conflict in Syria – and overwhelmed reception capacity in Greece and Italy, sparking one of the most major political crises in the EU.
