Deputies outraged at TVP's boycott of committee hearing

In an unprecedented move, TVP, the state TV broadcaster, yesterday chose not to show a live broadcast of the hearing of the special commission of inquiry into the death of former minister Barbara Blida.

On hearing the news, Ryszard Kalisz MP, the chairman of the committee, decided to suspend the hearing, arguing TVP thereby breached its duty to the public and undermined the viability of the committee, based as it is on full transparency.

According to sources inside TVP, the decision is part of a deliberate strategy adopted by its chairman Andrzej Urbański and intended to put pressure on the Parliamentary majority as it prepares to pass a law that would curtail or abolish TVP's license fee.

Coalition MPs denounced it as a declaration of an open war on the government by Urbański, who is "facing the sack", and speculated he might have wanted to help opposition Law and Justice (PiS), whose officials are implicated in the Blida case. They were backed by opposition MPs from he left. (Dziennik, p. 1; Gazeta Wyborcza, p. 9) R.M.