ELECTIONS IN POLAND

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25084, 16 January 1947, Page 7

ELECTIONS IN POLAND

CHARGES SAID TO BE UNFOUNDED

PRESIDENT’S COMMENT ON NOTES (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 7.30 p.m.) LONDON, Jan. 15. The Polish President, Mr Boleslaw Bierut, said the allegations in the British and American Notes that the elections to be held on January 19 were not free were general and were not backed by documents, and were unfounded, says Reuter’s correspondent in Warsaw.

Commenting on the allegations of Mr Mikolajczyk that his Peasant Party was being prevented from sending re*

presentatives to the electoral commissions, Mr Bierut said the electoral law did not exclude any democratic party from a place on the commissions. Polish relations wjth the Western States could best be improved by further development of the trade and cultural relations already begun. He added: “We have never created obstacles to the restoration of relations between the Church and the State, but the Vatican so far has not recognised the Polish Government. The State is encouraging the development of the Church in Poland. We will continue along the same path.” A Polish Government spokesman said Poland’s reply to the United States Note alleging political arrests, murders, and other repressive measures in connexion with the forthcoming elections would probably be handed over this week. He added that supporters of the Government bloc might have committed isolated excesses, but the “antidemocratic underground was responsible for mass terrorism.” Mr Mikolajczyk, said five prominent members of the Polish Peasant Party had died as a result of the security police and Government supporters beating and torturing them, says the Warsaw correspondent of the Associated Press. The police were beating newsboys and seizing copies of his newspaper, making mass arrests and confiscating Peasant Party election literature. >

The authorities had imprisoned 135 Peasant Party candidates and struck 250 off the list. The last hope of free, unfettered elections went when the local electoral commissions demanded that watchers at the polls should bear letters of recommendation from the county sheriffs, whom the Government bloc controlled. The Warsaw correspondent of the Associated Press says the Polish Government’s reply to the British and American Notes on the conduct of the elections says in effect that Poland will run the elections on January 19 as it sees fit, whether Britain and America like it or not and contends that the Government is fulfilling all the obligations incurred at Potsdam. It adds that the question of the election of representatives to Parliament is one exclusively for the Polish people.