Presidential election: Duda criticized for campaign speech

As Poland inches closer to the June 28 voting day and the support for Andrzej Duda, the incumbent president, dwindles in opinion polls, he has been vehemently criticized for calling his rivals “worse than coronavirus.”

“Look at the pages of history… 2015, when we took over power from the PO-PSL [opposition] coalition, unemployment was over 9 percent. At the worst time, during the coronavirus pandemic, unemployment increased to 6 percent, which is lower than when they ruled. They are a worse virus than coronavirus,” said Duda addressing a crowd in Kraków. Critics have called the president’s out on his “dehumanizing” comparison.

Duda, an ally of the governing right-wing nationalist and populist Law and Justice (PiS) party, has recently whipped up a storm in the world press after calling the promotion of LGBT rights an “ideology” more destructive than communism. He then took to Twitter to ask international media to “stop distributing fake news.”