The Law and Justice (PiS) MP Joanna Lichocka demanded punishment for the initiators of a poster campaign with a photo of her showing the opposition in the Sejm her middle finger. The court has just dropped the case. It ruled that there was no defamation of the MP. It was “acceptable criticism”.
Martin Mycielski, Vice-President of the Open Dialogue Foundation and Bartosz Kramek, Chair of the Foundation’s Supervisory Board, founded the informal group “Spontaniczny Sztab Obywatelski” in 2020. Its objective was “to remove PiS from power because they are demolishing Poland and to ridicule the nationalists when they ask”.
Lichocka’s middle finger goes on billboards
Their first campaign was to fund one anti-PiS billboard at the entrance to Suwałki city. “It cost PLN 1,400 at the time. We thought maybe people would want to chip in,” Mycielski recalls. They did want to. Even a lot. Thanks to a public fundraiser on Zrzutka.pl, the activists raised an amount that was astronomical by their expectations. A total of 8 772 people donated more than PLN 601 000. With this money, the organisers purchased, among other things, 173 billboards across the country plus dozens of banners and posters.
If someone donated a thousand zlotys, they could decide where a billboard would be hung. These often went to regions known as PiS bastions — Podkarpacie, Podlasie, Suwalszczyzna. “It was a conscious choice. Our aim was to reach the regions near eastern border, to educate people. Because the free media do not reach there; it was mainly TVP,” Mycielski explains.
But what were they to “educate” about? The billboards depicted Joanna Lichocka’s famous gesture with her middle finger. The MP showed it to opposition MPs just after the Sejm — with a PiS majority — had decided to allocate PLN 2 billion to public media rather than to treat children with cancer. For this behaviour, the MP was later reprimanded by the parliamentary ethics committee.
The captions for the photo on the billboards read:
- “PiS salutes cancer patients”;
- “2 billion zloty for TVP instead of cancer treatment. PiS salutes the sick.”
Below, in smaller font, the authors explained: “PiS passed a bill allocating PLN 2 billion to public media instead of oncology.”
“The truth won, and hypocrisy and excessive pride lost”
The campaign resonated with the public. Local, regional and national media all wrote about it. The case became so high-profile that in September 2020 Joanna Lichocka demanded an apology from the campaign organisers and a donation to a charity. “These billboards are pure truth. And one cannot be insulted by the truth. Lichocka should apologise,” said Polish People’s Party MP Miłosz Motyka at the time. “She insulted oncology patients,” added Michał Szczerba, a Civic Coalition parliamentarian.
In February 2021, Joanna Lichocka sued two activists, accusing them of “defamation”. She claimed that after their campaign she received “dozens of death threats from people demanding that she resign her parliamentary seat”. Kramek and Mycielski allegedly “slandered” her for conduct that humiliated her in the public eye and put her at risk of losing the confidence needed to hold office. These are charges under the controversial Article 212 of the CC. Kramek and Mycielski were facing up to a year in prison. Lichocka demanded that they express their apologies for the imputation of “bad intentions to her and the portrayal of her image in a mocking manner”.
The more-than-300-page indictment against the activists was prepared by Maciej Zaborowski, a lawyer known for defending many VIPs of the United Right and nominated by the Law and Justice party to be a member of the State Tribunal. During the times of the “good change”, he also became a member of the supervisory boards of state-owned companies PZU and PKP Intercity.
“We appreciate the MP’s determination to have her friendly greeting perpetuated as a symbol of the excessive pride and arrogance of PiS power,” the „Spontaniczny Sztab Obywatelski” commented ironically on social media platform at the time.
Lichocka also filed an indictment against Borys Budka, who was said to be “a leader of a pressure group”. From him, the MP demanded not only an apology, but also a PLN 10 000 donation to a charity fund and another amount for herself.
In March 2023, Borys Budka announced that the court had dismissed Lichocka’s claim in its entirety. “The truth has won, hypocrisy, mendacity and excessive pride have lost,” he commented.
Lichocka announced an appeal against the judgement on Twitter (now X).
“MP reminded of the arrogance of the previous government”
On 21 November 2023, Martin Mycielski tweeted that he and Bartosz Kramek had also won their lawsuit against Lichocka — the Warszawa-Śródmieście District Court had just dismissed the lawsuit against them.
“[The court] concluded that our billboards were ‘an assessment of activities, performed in the public sphere […] The function of a Member of Parliament is of a public nature and subject to numerous assessments and criticisms by individual citizens or social groups’,” Martin Mycielski reports on the reasoning of the verbal justification of the judgement.
The court found that the posting of Lichocka’s image was a result of her behaviour during the Sejm meeting and had already been circulated by the national media.
“The objective criteria for assessing the defendants’ actions do not allow us to assume that their actions were defamatory. They constituted acceptable criticism in a democratic state of the actions taken by a political party and its individual MPs,” the court explained.
He added that the defendants had as much right as other people to make such an “assessment” of the event involving the MP. “Joanna Lichocka was not insulted or slandered, much less deprived of the confidence needed to hold her mandate as an MP,” the court argued.
“We consider this case as another failed attempt by Law and Justice functionaries to intimidate citizens. […] We are also happy, by the way, that with this unnecessary lawsuit, MP Lichocka reminded Poles again about the rudeness, excessive pride and arrogance of the previous government,” Mycielski commented in his message to OKO.press.
Joanna Lichocka has not yet commented on the court’s decision.
Lichocka’s gesture. Version 2023
„Spontaniczny Sztab Obywatelski” had conducted 34 campaigns displaying a total of more than 480 billboards and 100–200 posters/banners across Poland, showing the ruling Law and Justice party in a critical and often mocking light.
In September 2023 on Zrzutka.pl, activists wrote to their fans: “As a result of a lot of requests to reactivate our pro-democracy campaign in the face of the threat of a third Law and Justice (PiS) term, we have prepared a special project, such a sentimental one, going back to the roots, especially for the Sieradz district from which a certain MP is running … What do you think?”
On the billboard, MP Lichocka makes her gesture, which blends in with the PiS logo. This image appears to be a painting hanging in some kind of museum. With the caption: “MP salutes Poles”.
Three billboards with this content were actually erected in Sieradz. One next to a Biedronka, the other right next to a PKN Orlen station. “If the MP comes to refuel — and she will certainly do so at Orlen — she will be greeted here by her gesture. And if she goes shopping at Biedronka — there too,” Mycielski explained on TT.
Lichocka again secured her place in the Sejm from the PiS lists in the last elections. Running in constituency 11 in Sieradz, she received more than 36,000 votes.
Source: OKO.press
Read also:
In other media:
- Wirtualne Media: Joanna Lichocka’s middle finger on billboards. Criminal lawsuit discontinued (22.11.2023)
- Press: A court has dropped the case against the authors of a campaign that used an image of the Law and Justice MP Joanna Lichocka showing the middle finger (22.11.2023)
- Rzeczpospolita: MP Lichocka’s famous gesture. Court discontinues proceedings (22.11.2023)
