Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced the referendum question in a video posted on social media. The message suggested that his party, Law and Justice, wants to include immigration in its general election campaign, a strategy that helped him rise to power in 2015.
Poland hosts more than a million Ukrainian refugees who are mostly white and Christian, but the authorities have long made it clear that they regard Muslims and people of different cultures as a threat to the country’s cultural identity and security. .
The interior ministers of the European Union approved in June a plan to share the responsibility of managing people who arrive in Europe without authorization, the origin of one of the oldest political crises in the bloc.
The Polish government wants to hold the referendum at the same time as the autumn parliamentary elections, scheduled for October 15.
Morawiecki indicated that the question would be: “Do you support the admission of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa within the forced relocation mechanism imposed by the European bureaucracy?”
The video to announce the question included scenes of burning cars and other incidents of street violence in Western Europe. In one clip, a black man licks a large knife in apparent excitement before committing a crime. So the party leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, says “do you want this to happen in Poland too? Do you want to stop owning your own country?”
The leaders have announced two other questions in recent days. One will consult people for their opinion on the privatization of state companies and the other will ask if they agree to raise the retirement age, which Law and Justice lowered to 60 years for women and 65 for men.
The questions are formulated in a way that is clearly aimed at portraying the main opposition force, the Civic Platform, as a threat to the interests of the Poles. The pro-business, pro-European party, which ruled from 2007 to 2015, raised the retirement age during his tenure, favored some privatization and was willing to accept a few thousand refugees before losing power.
The European asylum system collapsed eight years ago after more than a million people arrived in the bloc, most fleeing the war in Syria, and overwhelmed reception capacity in Greece and Italy. That caused one of the biggest political crises in the EU.
The bloc’s nations have been arguing ever since about which countries should take care of people who arrive without authorization, and whether other members should be obliged to help them manage it.
Originally, Poland was not a country of entry or destination for migrants and refugees. It became a state on the front line of the crisis two years ago when migrants from Belarus began to cross, something that European authorities see as an effort by a country allied with Russia to generate instability in Poland and other European countries.
Poland responded by building a large wall on its border. It recently increased its military presence in the area fearing a surge in immigration and other potential sources of instability.
Apart from the differences on immigration, Law and Justice maintains a long dispute with Brussels over the bloc’s perception that the changes introduced by Warsaw in the judiciary and media regulations represent democratic erosion.
FOUNTAIN: Associated Press
