Poles want cross to stay in parliament

photo - PAP/Radek Pietruszka

Seventy one percent of respondents told TNS OBOP that they were against the cross being removed.

One-in-five declared that they backed the removal of the cross, however.

The survey comes in the wake of a call from Janusz Palikot, leader of the liberal, anticlerical Palikot Movement that won a 10 percent share of the vote in the 9 October general election, for the cross to be taken down from the debating chamber of the lower house of parliament.

Palikot announced that the cross “is not a national symbol” and that it “should not hang in the Sejm (lower house of parliament) or many other public institutions.”

Leader of the socially conservative Law and Justice party Jaroslaw Kaczynski responded that his party would do its utmost to prevent the cross from being removed.

“There is no reason for the cross to be eliminated, just because a group of people with crazy beliefs wishes for it to be so,” he said.

Civic Platform, the largest party in parliament, has also said that they have no plans to remove the Christian symbol.

The newly published opinion poll for the Gazeta Wyborcza daily also indicates that 72 percent of Poles are against crosses being removed from schools.

A majority of younger voters – Palikot’s electoral base – are also against taking down the cross. Seventy eight percent of respondents between the ages of 18 and 29 told the pollsters that they were against the idea.

Palikot has said he could take the matter to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg if his request is not granted. (pg/nh)