The Warsaw-Śródmieście District Court discontinued criminal proceedings against the authors of a billboard campaign that used the image of Law and Justice MP Joanna Lichocka.
The high-profile case concerns a billboard campaign in Poland featuring a photo of Joanna Lichocka allegedly showing her middle finger in the Sejm during a vote on the allocation of nearly PLN 2 billion to TVP as compensation for low subscription revenues. The Senate wanted to designate the funds for children’s oncology, but the Sejm, with the votes of the Law and Justice party, failed to pass this.
The vote was very heated — a photo of Lichocka appeared in the media, showing the MP holding her middle finger extended upwards.
Lichocka asserted that she wasn’t making a vulgar gesture, merely rubbed it under her eye, but apologised to anyone who felt offended. She explained that footage had been used to mislead the public.
“Law and Justice salutes the sick” reads the billboard
A PiS MP filed a private bill of indictment against the authors of the billboard campaign. The Spontaniczny Sztab Obywatelski put up around 180 billboards with the MP’s image in 2020. They also featured the caption “2 billion zloty for TVP instead of cancer treatment. Law and Justice salutes the sick”. According to the MP, the authors of the campaign slandered her “for conduct that humiliated her in the public eye and put her at risk of losing the confidence needed to exercise her mandate”.
One of the members of the Spontaniczny Sztab Obywatelski — Marcin Mycielski — informed rp.pl that the court “did not find statements from which to draw such far-reaching conclusions” and discontinued the proceedings in this case.
Court: MPs’ actions are assessed by the public
Mycielski conveyed that, “In its written justification, the Warszawa-Śródmieście District Court found that our billboards were ‘an assessment of the activities, performed in the public sphere, of the defendant and the political party of which Ms Lichocka is an MP. […] The function of a Member of Parliament is of a public nature and is subject to numerous assessments and criticism by individual citizens or social groups. […] The actions of the defendants did not refer exclusively to the actions of Joanna Lichocka but were part of a broader social campaign aimed at criticising the way in which the Law and Justice party politicians exercise their legislative authority’”.
The court stated in its oral reasoning that “persons in public office, being a Member of the Polish Parliament, representing the people, must be aware — and I think they know this if they are adults and in full legal capacity— that this mission is burdened by the fact that their actions are judged by the public, which means that they can be judged both positively and negatively, that’s what it’s all about.”
Source: rp.pl
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