Ethics committee reprimands far-right MP over offensive tweets

Janusz Korwin-Mikke, an MP from the far-right Confederation party, has been officially reprimanded for calling people who favoured sanctions on Russia traitors, idiots and morons.

Chairperson of the Committee on Deputies' Ethics Monika Falej told PAP on Wednesday that Korwin-Mikke had made no apology for the comments, which he tweeted in September.

The original application to sanction Korwin-Mikke was made by a member of the public in reaction to the two tweets from September 20 and 27 this year.

In the tweets Korwin-Mikke wrote: "When finally, you gang of idiots, will you understand that 'sanctions against Russia' are hitting us?!?"

Another tweet said: "Whoever is in favour of 'sanctions against Russia' is a saboteur, a traitor ... or just (most likely) patently a moron!"

On Wednesday the ethics committee voted unanimously to punish Korwin-Mikke.

The vote came after the MP appeared before the committee, as requested. But Falaj said he came "not to explain his words or somehow respond to this request, but he came to make a row in the expectation that the MPs of the Ethics Committee would apologise to him."

She added that Korwin-Mikke said that if he did not hear an apology from the committee’s members, he would "publicise the whole matter in the European Union for being harassed, for uttering political words".

"That was the MP's explanation and then he just left," she added.

"His words offended the dignity of the MP and the good name of the Sejm, and his behaviour stands against Poland’s raison d'état," she said.

Korwin-Mikke is no stranger to controversy. In 2017, for example, while as an MEP, he caused uproar in the European Parliament when he told it that "women must earn less than men because they are weaker and less intelligent."