Polish opposition criticised after MP with Covid attends key parliamentary vote

Poland’s largest opposition party, Civic Platform (PO), has faced criticism after one of its MPs attended parliament for a key vote just hours after announcing he had tested positive for COVID-19. The MP has also been accused of hypocrisy after previously criticising the government for relaxing quarantine rules.

PO, however, has defended its politician, Dariusz Rosati, saying that he had to come to parliament because there is no longer any possibility of voting remotely. They note that he wore a mask and kept his distance from other people.

On Tuesday morning, Rosati had tweeted an image of a positive Covid test and announced that, as a result, he would be unable to attend a debate on the 2023 budget and a confidence vote on justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro.

However, despite that declaration the MP did in fact turn up for the confidence vote, in which the opposition were seeking to oust Ziobro (though they ended up falling five votes short of the required majority).

A photo published by an MP from the far-right Confederation (Konfederacja) party showed Rosati standing in a mask on the floor of the Sejm, the lower house of Poland’s parliament house.

That prompted criticism from figures in the ruling national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party and from The Left (Lewica), the second-largest opposition group.

Health minister Adam Niedzielski described Rosati’s actions as “a fundamental lack of responsibility” that “put the health of all MPs and the entire government at risk”.

PO and its allies in the Civic Coalition (KO) group, however, came to Rosati’s defence. They argued that current regulations do not prohibit MPs from participating in votes even if they are infected with coronavirus and noted that there is no longer an option of remote voting, which was available at the peak of the pandemic.

“There is no remote voting and the matter was an absolute priority,” said Katarzyna Lubnauer, a senior KO figure. “He behaved responsibly towards both his colleagues and Poland.”

“Our constituents expect from us that if someone has a cold – and this is how COVID is treated today – that they should be in the workplace,” Borys Budka, the head of KO’s parliamentary caucus, told news service Wirtualna Polska.

However, Anna-Maria Żukowska of The Left argued that “the law states that when someone is sick, they go to the doctor and get sick leave, [not go] to work.

A number of commentators also pointed to the incident as an example of hypocrisy from PO, who has often accused the ruling party of employing too lax a strategy in the fight against the pandemic.

Rosati himself, in January this year, criticised the government for shortening the period of compulsory quarantine, calling it a “complete withdrawal from the fight against the pandemic”.

Main photo credit: Krystian Kamiński/Twitter

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.