Lech Walesa: Solidarity protesters deserve a beating

POLAND’S former president Lech Walesa has said that members of Solidarity, the trade union he once led, deserve to be beaten for a disruptive protest they staged last week in Warsaw.

Solidarity last week led a picket for days in front of parliament in protest at a law raising the retirement age. After MPs passed the bill on Friday, enraged activists prevented some from leaving the building for some time and a scuffle ensued.

Mr Walesa, 68, said elected MPs must be respected and said prime minister Donald Tusk, who fought for the rise in the retirement age, should have dealt firmly with the protesters.

“If I were in Tusk’s position, I would order an attack on the demonstrators to pay them back,” Mr Walesa, a Nobel peace prize winner said in an interview with Radio Zet yesterday. “Authority must be respected. You should go to the polls, organise yourself. But once MPs are chosen, they must be respected.”

Monika Olejnik, the journalist interviewing Mr Walesa, asked him, “A Nobel peace laureate, a former leader of Solidarity, would beat the leader of Solidarity?” Mr Walesa replied: “As a prime minister, I would have the right to do it.”

He also said he felt the current Solidarity leader, Piotr Duda, should be singled out for a beating and that he would have liked to do it himself.

“I would beat him for not being able to wisely arrange political relations in free Poland.”