by MarekNYC
Wed Mar 22nd, 2006 at 05:44:29 PM EST
An interview with Marek Suski, PiS (governing party) deputy and responsible for choosing candidates for local elections in Mazowsze province (the Warsaw region), also the head of the party in that region.
The criteria for choosing candidates for local elections are supposedly to include the family origins of the candidates. Would, for example, it be helpful in Mazowsze to have ancestors who fought in the Home Army?
Marek Suski: A Home Army ancestry doesn't give a 100% guarantee of getting on the list, the most important criterium is competence. We are open to all milieus, but it would certainly be a good thing, an extra point.
Why is that important for you?
Because if a candidate's family fought for Poland, for independence, grandpa was in the Home Army, and great grandpa took part in the January Uprising (revolt against the Russians in 1863), than that gives us a guarantee of genetic patriotism.
What else - besides genetic patriotism - will be seen as favorable in the ancestry of local candidates?
We are inviting people to our lists who come from the historic intelligentsia. Let me explain: if your grandfather had a diploma, your father had a diploma, then there is no need for you to show your diploma. An upbringing in a proper family, where values were cultivated, guarantees decency.
[...]
During the People's Republic, a working class or peasant candidate was given points, with you guys one can get points for a grandfather with a good biography?
And what's wrong with that, that we in PiS see ourselves as the heirs of the independentist ethos and wish to have people from that tradition on our lists?
Genetyczni patrioci na listy PiS-u w wyborach
Genetic patriotism? I think that certain things are simply beyond parody.