The Speaker of the lower House of the Polish parliament, Elżbieta Witek, expressed feelings of being cheated by Speaker of the Senate, Tomasz Grodzki, as far as promises regarding the new presidential election bill. Grodzki convened a meeting of the Senate, which has this bill on the agenda, for June 1. Witek appealed to him to take the vote on the presidential elections bill as soon as this week. This bill is necessary for her constitutional duty to announce the new date for the presidential election. She is, however, being blocked by unnecessary delays in the Senate, where the opposition has the majority.
“I have been speaking with the Senate Speaker, I would say for quite a while, asking when he is going to call a session of the Senate. This is because I can call the Sejm session after them, in order to process all the alterations they might introduce to the bill. The Senate Speaker Tomasz Grodzki had promised me, not the first time, that he is not going to delay the proceedings and he will give it a fast lane consideration. He said that he will not use the maximum time of 30 days, allowed by law, to deal with it and that he will call the Senate session this week. That was last Friday. Whatever had happened over the weekend, he just announced the Senate session for next week, a week later than promised. There is no specific information as to if the Senate will vote on the new presidential election bill. This is not the first time I had been misled. I thought I was talking with the Senate Speaker as with a serious politician. This matter is very serious and we cannot just change the dates of any proceeding in a frivolous way, just because the only reason is that the opposition continuously finds something they do not agree with”, Speaker Witek commented on the matter.