ISTANBUL

Polish President Karol Nawrocki has asked the country’s Constitutional Tribunal to outlaw the Communist Party of Poland (KPP), arguing that the group violates the constitution by promoting totalitarian practices linked to the former communist regime, local media reported Thursday.

The motion claims the KPP, registered as a political party in 2002, upholds “totalitarian methods and practices of communism” and “assumes the use of violence to gain power and influence on state policy,” referencing elements of the system that governed Poland from 1945 to 1989.

A similar attempt was made in 2020, when then-Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro submitted a motion to the tribunal seeking the party’s dissolution, TVP World reported.

However, the hearing scheduled for October this year was adjourned indefinitely after Ziobro failed to appear. He is currently in Hungary and is wanted by Polish prosecutors on 26 charges, including leading an organized criminal group.

In its response to the earlier motion, the KPP rejected the allegations, saying the government was unfairly attributing to the party the “errors of the previous system.”

“The entire argument refers only to historical considerations and attempts to blame the contemporary KPP for all the errors of the previous system, which was not communism, but an attempt to introduce socialism, the positive side of which was social reforms,” the party said at the time.

Under Poland’s Act on Political Parties, the Constitutional Tribunal is required to remove a political party from the national register if it rules that its goals or activities are incompatible with the Constitution.