Krzysztof Bozak, a Polish Member of Parliament and Deputy Speaker of the Sejm joins Hearts of Oak to outline his political journey, beginning with his participation in a youth movement and the...
Krzysztof Bozak, a Polish Member of Parliament and Deputy Speaker of the Sejm joins Hearts of Oak to outline his political journey, beginning with his participation in a youth movement and the founding of the Confederation of Freedom and Independence Party.
Krzysztof lifts the veil on the Law and Justice Party's EU stance, economic policies, and immigration management.
He tells us of the significance of upholding conservative and nationalist values amidst mainstream narratives.
Krzysztof highlights his role in the Polish Parliament and his openness to collaborating with like-minded international entities. This interview offers deep insights into Polish politics, party distinctions, and the importance of ideological integrity in a changing political landscape.
Krzysztof Bosak began his political career as an activist and spokesman for the organisation All-Polish Youth. In 2005, he became one of the youngest Polish MPs in history, elected as a candidate of the League of Polish Families, a conservative party, at the age of 23.
Krzysztof is now the leader of Confederation of Freedom and Independence Party, Member of Parliament and Deputy Speaker of the Sejm.
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Confederation of Freedom and Independence Party
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Interview recorded 30.4.24
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TRANSCRIPT
(Hearts of Oak)
And I'm delighted to be joined by a member of the Polish Parliament, that is Krzysztof Bozak. Krzysztof, thank you for your time today.
(Krzysztof Bosak)
Thank you for the invitation and welcome everybody.
Great to speak with you. I had the privilege of meeting you back, goodness, 18 months ago, I think, with Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff , a good friend of both of ours. And you are a member of the Polish parliament and I'm looking forward to understanding a little bit about the Polish parliament setup. Each country is different but you are the president of the national movement and you're the leader of the confederation or confederation of Freedom and Independence Party, and you're the Deputy Speaker of the House, which is called the Sejm. And your a husband, father, you're a Christian, and I want to delve into all of those. But Krzysztof, you became a member of the Parliament back in 2005.
You were very young back then. Tell me why you got involved in politics. How did that happen and how did you end up standing as a member of parliament and being elected?
It's a long story. In fact, this time I was the youngest MP in this term and I started being involved in politics by a youth movement, a Catholic Eurosceptic and Catholic Nationalist youth movement. Since I was in high school. I was 17 or 18 years old when I joined. It was the time of the debate about joining the EU. All mainstream parties, mainstream medias, mainstream bishops, mainstream everything was in favour of joining EU. And a small minority of speakers and social leaders were against defending principles of independence, sovereignty, traditional values, and so on. And I was sure that they are right and I joined this movement, being against joining European Union at that time. I joined a youth movement, then in 2001 a conservative pro-family, pro-life Eurosceptic party was created.
It was League of Polish Families. It was kind of coalition of very different right-wing conservative or Eurosceptic or nationalist groups. And four years later I became the youngest MP being elected from my home town and constituency.
From the 10th place on the list. So I was not a leader of the list, I was on the 10th place and people elected me from this list as the only MP in this constituency. So it was a very big success and a very big surprise for many people. And it was short term, only two years, because this was a time of big political instability. We had two government changes. It was, let's say, right-wing government, many scandals, and after two years, earlier elections, and my political party didn't succeed. League of Polish Families disappeared from Polish politics. Law and Justice political party took everything, every right-wing voters. We were against, we were competitors of law and justice, competitors from the right. They were centre-right from our perspective. and after that for 12 years I was outside the Parliament involved in social movement and working in right-wing NGOs, in think tanks like Republican Foundation, defending the same values on the social level with my colleagues and people who didn't lose faith in being active and trying to create truly right-wing political movement. We tried many times different attempts to get into the Parliament we have 5% threshold and proportional system so it's quite hard if you do not have support from big business big media or big money and we succeed in 2019 I went back to Parliament this time as a co-leader of of Confederation, Freedom and Independence. It is a coalition now, coalition of three political parties, three political movements.
My movement, national movement, still the same values, still the same political tradition. So national conservative Catholic tradition, national democratic tradition of Polish political independence movement, and we created this national movement as a new political party ten years before, in 2013. So for six years we were outside the parliament, and after that we made a coalition with conservative libertarians and traditionalists. So conservative libertarians were created by long-term defender of economic freedom and civil liberties.
Janusz Korwin-Mikke, now he's not in his political party, he's pleaded, but he created this political party and now they have a younger leader, Sławomir Manczan from Next Generation, very popular young businessman and tax advisor and also a big defender of economic freedom and conservative values. So this is the second pillar first is national conservative Catholic second is let's say conservative libertarian and the third is citizens movement traditionalist movement of Jagger Brown is a quite popular right-wing movie a documentary movies director an artist and intellectual who who were involved in politics also a few years before, first being on anti-communist and right-wing position, and then shifting more to the right and building the coalition with us.
So now we have Confederation as a coalition, or let's say umbrella party, coalition party, for these three different movements and many smaller groups who joined us. And we work collectively, we have collective leadership and we challenge law and justice from the right. We were in opposition during eight years of law and justice government. From our perspective they are not very conservative and they are,
I know that sometimes media call them nationalists, but from our perspective they were a typical centre-right political party. And we made an alternative right party for Polish voters and now we even extended the number of voters who support us. So now we have 18 MPs and more than 7% in polls and now we fight to get into the European Parliament. Because for now there are only people from Law and Justice and their allies parties. And we believe that Polish voters deserve to have better representation in European Parliament.
Built by truly critical to European Union politicians, not supporters of EU who change only some narrative, but they always vote in favour of you.
Well, tell us about the... Because when I, as a Brit, maybe read the newspapers here in the UK, it would have talked to the Law and Justice Party as being an extreme right party. In a similar way, they mock Orbán in Hungary.
But I'm curious to see where you fit in, Because when I went over and met with you, I begun to understand the Law and Justice Party were maybe not as wonderful as the West may think. So what makes the Confederation different than the Law and Justice Party?
Yeah. It's a very complicated topic, but I think that it's easier to propose some metaphor or some example. So it's quite similar in my opinion like in the United States where you have mainstream Republicans and you have Trump supporters and for example Rand Paul or some people who are more nationalist-oriented.
So, in Polish politics, law and justice is like mainstream republicans. They use some words, some phrases, some ideas of conservative or even pro-national right, but they use it intentionally rather for propaganda and they act like centre-right politicians.
When they were in government in Poland, they even introduced many policies. We can say that these policies that they developed on social level or in economic policy, these are rather social democratic policy, not conservative or right-wing or not nationalist in any way. So, to go into the details, we criticise them because they supported European integration on the new level. First, many years ago, they supported Lisbon Treaty. They negotiated Lisbon Treaty being in government. Then their president signed the Lisbon Treaty. They made a propaganda with mainstream and center-left and leftists that the Lisbon Treaty is good for Poland. And we believe the opposite, that it was a disaster. Our situation is much worse in the EU under the Lisbon Treaty than before.
Then, during the last eight years, they supported the European Green Deal and their Prime Minister accepted the European Green Deal in the European Council. Now farmers oppose, they even criticise in the current electoral campaign. They made a pledge that they will stop the European Green Deal, but they do not say that their prime minister accepted it on the European Council in 2019 then in 2020 their prime minister Morawiecki accepted fit for 55.
So they increased the goal of reducing these emissions 15 percent percent more and they introduced many new policies in European union and it is all possible because they are accepted in European council on a 2020 meeting in fact prime minister Morawiecki also proposed us as a polish prime minister in Brazos creating new pan-European taxes it's completely It's completely against our Constitution, it's completely against our values. We believe that our phrase is that we need small taxes and only paid in Poland and they three or five new pan-European taxes and they accepted it and we paid this to Brussels, not to Warsaw and we have no influence on how this will be used, this money. Then they accepted European debt, we strongly opposed any idea of giving this right to Eurocrats in Brussels to introducing their own debt and building their own sources of income by that. And they, of course, accepted. Then they accepted also in 2020 a special pan-European COVID fund called Next Generation EU, even this phrase, next generation EU is evil and of course they accepted it and they made a campaign in Poland that it's a big success of Poland and that we will have billions of euros because of this success of Prime Minister Morawiecki and law and justice.
And there was a small minority of their MPs who criticised this but they were silenced in the party and in the media and in fact from the perspective of Polish voters we were the only one independent voice in Parliament. I took part in this debate in Parliament and criticised this next, please check this by some search engines, what is this, next generation EU. This is not only a European debt program.
It is paid by European taxes and by European debt for many years, but it's also a new attitude towards European funds. They accepted that we will have funds only under many new political conditions. So now we got some milestones, they call these milestones, and this is the list of tasks, of political tasks, and they program Polish policy by Polish so-called democratic government from Brussels without any base in constitution.
We have more than 100 milestones and these are the conditions to get this money. So, we made a new debt. This is not our debt, this is the European debt. And to use this debt, we have conflict with EU for almost 3 or 4 years. And they now lecture us on every issue from this list of 100 milestones. And Prime Minister Morawiecki from the Law and Justice Party in the Polish parliament said that he is not ashamed of this deal because, for example, Italians have more than 400 milestones, tasks. So it's a nightmare from the perspective of somebody who is in favour of Polish independence and sovereign policy and democracy and even democracy in Poland. They made a secret agreement in Polish parliament with leftists to support this, because even in their own political camp, they call it United Right, which is false, because the right in Poland is not united. But they use this phrase united right and theywere afraid that not every MP will support this but because it was so controversial so they made a secret agreement with leftists. They took some leftist agenda in this deal and they made majority with leftists to push it through the parliament.
Then they never discussed all this deal and this 100 milestones in parliament. We had never any debate on this issue. In fact, this negotiations were secret also against people in government. Not every member of government knew what they discussed in Brussels. Now we know this only from media. They never introduced this deal in parliament and explained what's going on. Then they accepted very, in my opinion, bad new rule called rule of law conditionality. So now without base in European treaties, Eurocrats in Brussels can lecture us what is rule of law. They can stop money for us. So these were some examples of their EU policy. There are many more, for example, their member of European Committee was in favour of European Green Deal. He even said that it's in line with political agenda on agriculture of law and justice.
So they had a big conflict, of course, with EU on this rule of law. And in this conflict they it was completely complete disaster for Polish state because they started this conflict and then they missed everything because they never finished any reform of courts in Poland and they made even leftists stronger in Poland because they tried to make some compromise with Brussels.
This compromise was never accepted by Brussels because it was not, let's say, 100% what Brussels wanted. But in fact we have a very big mess in courts and in law about courts and about independence of judiciary. And now after this conflict and these reforms never finished as I said the situation is worse than when it started worse on the sovereignty worse on the justice and the time that you need to wait in the court for the justice.
And worse, from the perspective of the power of liberal lobby in judiciary and right-wing people who, trusted law and justice government are in a very bad situation now because they took some positions or some propositions, and now they are nowhere, in the middle of nowhere.
It's a very sad story. Then we have economic policy. Their economic policy was, in fact, social democratic. So they raised taxes, they raised debts, they extended public spending. They tried to centralize every policy. They took money from local governments. they put this money to their national budget and they try to influence every policy by their political nominees and they work like, let's say, Maybe not autocratic, but it was a typical one-party government which tried to centralize and control everything. It's the opposite that I understand the pro-national policy or conservative policy.
It was, in my opinion, it was elitist and even social democratic when you analyse. For example, they were strongly against home-schooling and against independent schools. They proposed some legislation to ban homes chooling. After some protests of conservatives and leftists united, they stepped back. But after protests in their party and outside and from many directions.
But their first goal was to centralize everything under the government rule. And we said that it's stupid because they will not rule for forever and after them the left will come to the government and exactly this is what we have in Poland. Now we have center-left government, liberal and leftists, and the left took Ministry of Education, everything was centralized. And now they try to switch, oppose every institution and every policy that law and justice created. And we said that it will be so. And now we see the consequences of their stupid policy, which was not conservative, not Christian, not supporting any citizens' movement.
They believed only in their political party and that's all. This is their philosophy.
Then we have a very important issue for us in Poland, let's say, immigration. Law and Justice government was introduced in Poland, open borders policy. They were against illegal immigration and at the same time they opened borders.
For biggest immigration, legal immigration in Poland since maybe 300 years. Last time that we have so big immigration was maybe in 16th or 17th century. Now we have millions of legal immigrants in Poland, the majority of them are Ukrainians, but there are also people from different Asian and especially Asian countries. They didn't want immigrants from Africa, but they invited people from Asia. They made, being anti-Russian party, they made a special easier way for Russian citizens to come to Poland, to be a part of our labor market. They opened our market for people from Belarus, from Central Asia, from Caucasus. Now Georgian immigrants are the biggest group when you analyze crimes in Poland, they are in the first place. When you analyse people who smuggle illegal immigrants, Ukrainians are in the first place.
We have, it's strange, but there is no official statistics how many immigrants do we have in Poland. Nobody can count them, because these are millions and they opened borders for legal immigration, but they didn't build any administration to control the immigration. So, in fact, the best data that we have is not from the government, but from telecom operators, from big telecom business who can say how many people use different languages on their phones. So this is how we know. Or from banks, because these people from abroad open bank accounts.
But it's not all. It's not started with the war in Ukraine. This is what I would like to underline. We had much more than a million Ukrainian people in Poland before the war. They were intentionally invited and government worked also on some agreements with some Asian countries to increase legal immigration to Poland. These were also Muslim countries. During the law and justice government, Muslim population in Poland increased, in my opinion, more than ten times.
In fact, to be honest, it is still small, but they started this. So now we have information that a third mosque will be built in Warsaw, and the biggest one, of course, with the money from abroad, because they never, they always criticized any foreign influence, and they never proposed any legislation to stop the influence by money from abroad, for the politics, or for example, to found Islam, or Muslim movement in Poland. Then, when the war in Ukraine started, they opened borders for refugees and in fact not only for refugees but for everybody with Ukrainian passport because they made some legislation.
Giving every privilege that Polish citizens have for everybody with Ukrainian passport, even for people who came here from Western Europe. It's strange, but it's true. They made a special amendment, because their first goal was always to encourage as many foreigners to live and work in Poland as it is possible. It has two reasons. First is that they believe in multicultural society.
It is a part of, this is some branch of Polish pre-modern tradition, that we had a commonwealth with different nations and some of them are from this tradition and they believe that they can rebuild this commonwealth with different nations in encouraging these nations to build some community, not let's say Polish community, but they call it a Republican community, a new commonwealth of nations. From our perspective, it sounds very similar to globalist agenda, but they say, no, no, no, it's not a multiculturalism by globalists, This is our tradition of Polish multiculturalism. We as a national movement completely do not believe in this concept. We believe it's anachronic, pre-modern, and it didn't work. In fact, we had a commonwealth with different nations, but these nations don't want commonwealth with us. These nations like Belarusians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, all of them wanted independent states. And it's normal, it's normal that every nation want to have their own independent states. So, some of law and justice politicians are people older age with their heads in the clouds, reading historical books and believing in some ideas, for example, from 17th, 16th or 18th century. And in my opinion they don't understand nothing from our times and especially they don't understand that mass immigration is a big threat for the society. In Poland this process started, especially in bigger cities. Warsaw under the Law and Justice government became much closer to London when we analysed the population. There are not many African people, but many people from Asia, as I said, and especially from Russia and Ukraine. The situation is changing very fast. They made a legislation and as I said, they gave every privilege, every policy for Polish citizens. They gave it also to the people with Ukrainian passports. And these are many millions of people who would like to live abroad.
We are the only European nation that pays for everything. And, of course, we have nothing in exchange. We have some agenda towards Ukraine, but they did nothing from our agenda, and we gave everything. And this is what we're against because we believe that it's impossible for one country to have two nations on the payroll, and this is how it works now. Then you have also Ukraine and supporting Ukraine agenda. At the beginning of the war we were not against, because we believed that this horrible Russian attack, is a crime and is a threat, but after two years we see that their government gave all that we have to Ukraine and the result is still not clear and other European nations do not act this way. They negotiate some things for them.
Americans are also not very fast to give everything what they have. And now, for example, our army do not have enough weapons because they gave new weapons from Polish army to Ukraine. And at the beginning they said that Americans or Germans will give us in change new equipment, all the equipment and the thing, but they didn't. So it's very hard being a Pole and seeing all of that. It's very hard not to be critical to law and justice and their government. In fact, we are not surprised. We know these people for many years. We know that during the debate about joining EU they were in the same camp as leftists, as centrists, progressives and all of them. In fact, they were never national or truly traditionalist or truly conservative right. They are a mix of people of different ideas and their leader of law and justice. It's not easy to understand this, being a foreigner, but to understand the situation you should know that the leader of law and justice Jaroslaw Kaczynski.
He always were against Polish nationalist tradition. He is rather from the tradition of Polish patriotic socialism. We had some pre-war tradition from interwar period of Polish, let's say, Polish patriotic socialists and this is their first choice. They do not talk about this last decades because they know that people would like to vote right-wing party, not patriotic left-wing party. But the leader is rather from, let's say, centrist or centre-left patriotic republican tradition, the leader of law and justice.
The members of the party are very mixed and very different. I would not say that every MP is bad. There are many probably MPs with good views but they vote bad or act bad being in government. I will give you one more or two more examples. For example, we had a very big debate in Poland about pro-life. Law and justice was always pro-life in declaration but when they got majority they did everything thing not to vote on pro-life bill so two times polish pro-life movement collected more than hundreds of thousands of signatures having majority so-called pro-life majority people had to collect hundreds of thousands of signatures to put citizens bill to parliament and they voted against. They voted against for two times, then we as right-wing MPs, some of their MPs and every MP from Confederation made written request to Constitutional Court and Constitutional Court with some nominees, right-wing nominees from Law and Justice waited few years to analyse this request, but after they analysed this, they made a judgement that it is against Polish constitution to kill unborn babies with some disabilities or health problems. And this is how the situation changed, not by the voting in parliament, And of course, people who are in favour of law and justice say that this was their secret plan to organise this this way. But I do not believe. In my opinion, it was rather by accident. They never wanted. And now their former prime minister Morawiecki said that he is against this sentence of the court, of constitutional court. That they should defend this. Yes. But they said that they are against because they are afraid of public opinion, people who like abortion, they want centrist voters and so on. So they do not defend, they controlled every media in Poland and they didn't defend this issue. Another example, their prime minister supported long-term EU LGBT strategy. Being prime minister voted in favour. Another example, their minister who was responsible for European funds sent a secret letter to local governments that if they want European funds they should cancel Anti-LGBT and pro-family statements. Many local councils made some statements that they are against LGBT propaganda in schools and they support normal family policy. It was then criticized by, of course, progressive media and some LGBT organizations, but there was nothing against citizens' rights. It was nothing against civil liberties or something. It was a declaration that we don't want propaganda in schools or something like that. And we know that they made this letter to local governments. We know that only from LGBT organizations because they published this, being proud that the so-called right-wing government is pushing the pressure with the EU to local governments to be not too much conservative. Yes, so it shows how they work and they say one thing and they do the opposite and it was always like that. We know we know these people for four decades So we are not surprised about normal polish voter don't know all of these facts because you need, hundreds of hours to follow every information and analyse everything to to gather these details and to understand what's going on and if you follow only mainstream media, even mainstream Catholic media in Poland.
In progressive mainstream media, you had an attack on law and justice, that these are nationalists, they are xenophobic, they are anti-European, they want to go back to the Middle Ages or something like that. So people said, okay, these are good people, yes, they are very conservative. And if you listen to some right-wing media or Catholic media, They are true conservatives. They fight very hard, tough fights in the EU and so on. And you had nowhere to have the truth about how they rule, how they govern the country. Everybody analyzed only what they said. And their speeches were quite good. I can agree. For example, two days ago, I listened to the speech of their leader and to their convention about EU policy and I could take this and it could be my speech, yes, but it has nothing to do with their government, what they did in Brussels. This is the problem and I think it's a problem in many countries. It's a problem also in Hungary.
Orban is also very pragmatic, yes, he's not a nationalist. And there's a problem in Italy with the Meloni government. It's not an independent agenda of independence. And in many other countries. So this is how it works. And this is why we believe that Polish politics deserve a truly right-wing party with truly conservative and truly pro-national and sovereign agenda and people who are against political correctness. This is what gathers us in Confederation. We are against political correctness. We don't want to be influenced in any way by anybody from mainstream. And we are proud that we are anti-mainstream. Of course, I had many debates in mainstream media, so I always go when they ask me and I always discuss.
And I believe that my views are not radical or far-right or anything like that. But I don't want to give up my principles and my beliefs. I don't want, I would rather, I would like to be rather outside politics, like being 12 years outside the parliament, than joining this, let's say, fake right political parties and saying good speeches and voting bad things. I don't want that.
Well, Krzysztof, thank you for giving us such an overview of Polish politics. And I wish that we had politicians like yourself in the UK with conviction, with beliefs that actually stood on a biblical principle on a lot of these issues. And I just the final thought is as deputy speaker, I mean, that is a that is a prestigious, important position. You must be Donald Tusk's kind of worst nightmare, that you stand for everything he is against. I'm sure it was difficult to actually get in that position, was it? I'm sure there was opposition. I know we only have a few minutes, but I'm just curious to know the opposition from people like Tusk to actually having you, a nationalist, a Christian, in that position.
It's a little bit different, in my opinion. To understand the situation, you should know that the main line of political difference, is in Poland between Civic Platform and Donald Tusk as a leader, and Law and Justice and Jarosław Kaczyński as a leader. It's not, on some level of course it's a, let's say, ideological and political different, but they have many things in common. This is our, let's say, talking point, yes, that they are not so different on the level of agenda of political program. When you analyze their EU policy, they could exchange their ministers, and in fact, they're exchanged in these two political parties many members of cabinets. In fact, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki before was an advisor to Donald Tusk.
And there are many examples, I will not go into the detail because it's not so important. It is important to understand that it's a, let's say, ambition conflict between Kaczynski and Tusk.
It's obvious that they hate each other. It started in 80s in the opposition movement. They have very bad opinion about each other, very bad. This is a true conflict, a true personal conflict. Both of them try to be pragmatic and in fact they are very pragmatic, very. But not on this one issue, not all about them themselves. This is their weak point that they become very emotional. So going back to the situation in the chamber and me as a deputy speaker Donald Tusk and don't care he don't care he hate yaroslav kaczynski and me I'm the guy from the different generation, in my opinion he do not believe in anything he is a pragmatic politician after so many years in politics. He was a liberal, he was a classic liberal in 80s, maybe early 90s. So on the level of defending economic freedom, I think he understands everything what we say. And he's a former classic liberal.
Maybe he started on the same positions as Viktor Orban, but during years in politics, he lost belief probably in any principle. And now probably the only thing that he believes is pragmatism and power. Being in power and being pragmatic. This is how I understand him.
So, in my opinion, he used left-wing politicians as tools. He gave them the platform, as you say in English, he gave them the platform, he gave them the space, even in government, he gave them a very important part of administration because he doesn't care. Not because he supports these ideas, he doesn't care. In my opinion, he personally believes that these are stupid people with stupid program but he didn't care. So he also didn't care about my views, in my opinion. Of course, some of his members in his political party care a lot and hate very conservative people. This is, let's say, a pro-abortion lobby in his party, very strong now, because his party started as centre-right party. It is interesting that Civic Platform, the party of Donald Tusk, started in 2001, all these three parties that I talked about, so League of Polish Families, Law and Justice and Civic Platform, all these political parties started in 2001 and entered the parliament. League of Polish Families after seven years was kicked out from parliament by voters unfortunately, but Law and Justice and Civic Platform stayed there and both Law and Justice Party and Civic Platform started as centre-right political parties very similar to each other, so similar that some politicians in 2001 didn't know which one to join so it was like a lottery or you had colleagues here so you go there you have colleagues here you go there it was a time of big changes in Polish politics so a civic platform the party of Donald Tusk started as a platform with principles of defending western civilization defending Christian values defending economic freedom defending some some conservative values maybe not everything but some and being pro-EU this was the starting point and after 20 years, they are centre-left political parties with very big pro-abortion, progressive lobby inside, former post-communist politicians, former leftist politicians inside, Green Party inside, because they built a civic coalition, they extended civic platform into civic coalition. And in this coalition, you have people who split it from the post-communist left, you have Green Party, you have some citizens' movement, and
It's a central left spectrum. And Donald Tusk is a leader for everybody because now he tried to be pragmatic, not to be too close to any special views, yes? So for me it's completely not a problem. It's a problem with some MPs who are trying to be a little bit offensive or sometimes aggressive but I have my attitude which is always being very calm and polite to everybody no matter what are his views. I try to be polite and with respect to everybody this is I believe that how we should act in democratic politics and in Parliament and it works, because in fact even left-wing MPs or pro-abortion MPs have a good opinion about me as a deputy speaker, because I do not interrupt their speeches, I'm not nasty, counting their time. They could cooperate on this normal level with me, in my opinion, much better than, for example, with deputy speakers from law and justice, they were horrible, they were nasty, they were aggressive.
They used their seat to, not to push their agenda, but to push their emotions against other people. So they were, there were attempts to push me from the seat, to kick me from the seat, the left put this request, but nobody voted in favor of this request, because nobody believed that it's a good decision to take this position from me and give it to anybody else. I think it's a result of maybe 20 years of my work in public debate and people know who I am, people know that I have my views, but people even who do not believe in my views, they respect that I didn't change them for many years, that I, in fact, in my opinion, many people from centre-left also respect me, that I didn't join law and justice. Because they have very bad opinion about law and justice, also about how they ruled when you analyse what they did with public money. Yes, this is another story, what they did with public money, how they used this for themselves. Their interests.
Not very many bad stories. And we were not involved in all of that. So in my opinion, I have, I am lucky because I have a big respect. Of course, not everybody like me and especially not everybody like my views. But I have no reasons, I have no reason to say that I'm in a bad situation.
Well, Krzysztof, I do appreciate your time. I'm so thankful to have you on. I know you've got great demands on your time being in that high profile position and being a high profile figure in the country. So thank you so much for giving us your time to explain to our UK and US audience a little bit about Polish politics. So thank you.
Thank you very much for this invitation and this conversation and to finish this conversation with some good accent I would like to invite everybody who are true conservative people to come to Poland to meet us. We are very open to extend our international contacts. What I would like to say is that on the level of personal contacts.
If some of you have some contacts with people from law and justice, it's not bad for us. As a normal people, we talk with each other normally in Parliament and outside Parliament. So we are critical to their leadership and to their prime minister, but taking normal MPs, we talk like normal people.
And it is possible to have contacts with law and justice, for example, in European Parliament and with us in Poland or when we enter the European Parliament. So I would like to encourage everybody from truly right-wing movement to build contacts with Polish people, with Polish conservative organisations, political parties, editorial houses, NGOs, social movements. We have a big social movement, very many organizations and many good people. And please, come to Poland, have this contact, maybe also some people from the States. I believe that we should support each other. I always put some time and my energy to build this contact, so maybe some of my colleagues from abroad will watch this interview. I hope so. And me personally and our colleagues from Confederation, we are always very open to support every good people with good ideas to defend the principles that we believe, also conservative, traditional, Christian, Pro-freedom, pro-independence, and other good principles.
So, this is my word and I believe that despite all these bad tendencies that we see in Western world, in Europe, we should have hope and we should defend good principles and good values, because this is our duty and this is how I believe, this is what we should do. So I have very big respect for every people who work in politics and on social level in countries that are less conservative than Poland, because I know how it feels when your country is going in the wrong direction. I talked with people from different countries and I know how it feels and I have big respect if you do a good job and give hope to your people, to your nations.
Exactly. Well, thank you, Krzysztof, for your time. Greatly appreciate it. And I'm sure we will speak soon.
Thank you very much.
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2024-01-28
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