President Karol Nawrocki announced the preparation of a draft anti-Bander's bill to be sent to the Sejm in 2 weeks.
This task responds to the President's veto of the amendment of the Act on Assistance to Ukrainian Citizens. The main premise of the fresh legislative initiative is the formal designation of the flag symbols as equivalent to Nazi and Communist symbols. In practice this means that for promoting flagism they are to face the same criminal consequences as for promoting totalitarianism.
The presidential draft provides for the inclusion in the Criminal Code of rules penalising the spread of the flag ideology and the public presentation of symbols related to it. The slogan “stop flagism” is to be transferred from political declarations to real regulation. In addition, the president wants the law to supply for a tightening of penalties for illegal crossing the border of the Republic of Poland, even up to 5 years imprisonment. The task besides includes amendments to the Act on the Institute of National Memory, so as to clearly qualify crimes committed by CNS-UPA as genocide crimes, without leaving area for interpretation.
The political and moral basis for the proposed changes is, according to the President, the rule of historical justice and the request to defend Polish identity and national memory. Nawrocki stressed that there was no agreement to relativize work for Volyn massacre and another crimes committed by Ukrainian nationalists during planet War II. The president besides wants to limit the automatic granting of citizenship to foreigners, extending the period essential to get it to 10 years, as an component stressing that Polish citizenship cannot be treated as formality, but as a privilege resulting from integration and loyalty to the state.
The announcement of the anti-Bander Act falls within the broader political context of tightening migration policy and redefining Poland's relations with Ukraine. Nawrocki, as a president from the IPN environment, declares that he will not let the border between the victim and the perpetrator to be blurred in historical accounts. The project, which is being prepared by the President's Office, is to be ready in early September and will be subject to political and social consultations.
