"We as citizens will need to be assured that a new government would have faith in democracy, Europeanism and freedom guaranteed by law,” Olga Tokarczuk’s says two weeks before Poland goes to the polls in a potentially pivotal election on 15 October.
"We need assurances that such a government would listen to us and respond to our needs, and not, like the present one, subordinate the majority of citizens to anachronistic ‘traditional values’ adhered to only by a 30% minority,”
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Polish opposition seeking to topple the country’s rightwing populist government needs to start spelling out its commitment to progressive causes, the Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk has urged in a rare political interview.
“We as citizens will need to be assured that a new government would have faith in democracy, Europeanism and freedom guaranteed by law,” Tokarczuk told the Guardian two weeks before Poland goes to the polls in a potentially pivotal election on 15 October.
“We need assurances that such a government would listen to us and respond to our needs, and not, like the present one, subordinate the majority of citizens to anachronistic ‘traditional values’ adhered to only by a 30% minority,” added the novelist, who was jointly awarded the Nobel prize in literature with Austrian author Peter Handke in 2018.
The former prime minister, who would most likely need to enter alliances with parties to his right or left to regain power, has recently tried to assuage those fears, expressing his commitment to civil partnerships for same-sex couples and gender-recognition processes for trans people.
“[If] I refer publicly to anything to do with current Polish social or ecological policies, journalists who depend on the present government will immediately respond by stigmatising my words, and the trolls will start up their hate,” she said.
“In the context of the major problems demanding swift solutions with which the world and Poland are struggling, it is shocking that politicians find the time to make malevolent, mean-spirited comments about movies that they haven’t even seen.”
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