Lepper remains defiant even after prison sentence is reduced to a fine

The Court of Appeal in Gdansk has decided that controversial Samoobrona leader Andrzej Lepper will not have to spend time in prison for insulting the Polish president and two other leading politicians. Originally Lepper was sentenced to 16 months in jail for offensive remarks he made in 1999 about President Aleksander Kwasniewski and two former deputy Prime Ministers, Leszek Balcerowicz and Janusz Tomaszewski. Now the Gdansk court has ruled that instead he will have to pay a fine of zl.20,000. Lepper, insisting that he would refuse to pay any fine, even if it was only zl.6, announced that he would take the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. During yesterday's trial Lepper once more launched an attack on Kwasniewski, saying, "The president is hard-working. He plays tennis, swims in a swimming pool, travels abroad, and pats other people on the shoulder. But how does Poland benefit?" (Rzeczpospolita, p. A3) A.Z.