“WILL STIFLE OPPOSITION”

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25085, 17 January 1947, Page 7

“WILL STIFLE OPPOSITION”

ELECTION MEASURES IN POLAND ACCOUNT BY BRITISH CORRESPONDENT • (Rec. 9 p.m.) LONDON, Jan. 16. A correspondent of the ‘‘Daily Herald,” G. E. R. Gedye, who has arrived in Warsaw to report Sunday’s Polish election, describes some of the things that are happening. "On totally unproved allegations of collaboration with the Germans or with the present underground movement,” he says, ‘‘opposition supporters are being struck off the electoral registers wholesale. Strong pressure is being exerted to force voters to declare their votes openly. Factory workers are being asked to avoid the polling booths and hand their voting cards to Communist factory leaders who will record them, the opposition being deprived of any chance of controlling the counting of the votes. The opposition headquarters are being constantly attacked by gangs of toughs. “In fact, the whole machinery of the government is working at high pressure to ensure that Sunday’s elections instead of being ‘free and unfettered’ will stifle all opposition and produce certain ‘victory’ for the government. “Government spokesmen assert that they are sure of winning the elections ‘because they have the support of the population.’ Nobody doubts they will win—hands down, but the reason they adduce for the expected victory is wholly irrelevant and the results of the polling cannot possibly substantiate ft.” The Polish Prime Minister, Mr Edward Osubka-Morawski, at a press conference, predicted a sweeping victory for the Government bloc parties in Sunday’s elections the voting in which, he declared, would be free and unfettered. “I have no time for such fantasies,” he replied when asked what would be the political results if Mr Mikolajczyk’s Peasant Party “by some mischance” happened to win. The correspondent of the Associated Press says that within an hour of the Prime Minister’s conference two lorry loads of hooligans attacked and wrecked a printing shop in the centre

of the city publishing Peasant Party election material A Polish Government spokesman said 28 members of electoral commissions and of the civic militia' guarding the electoral offices had been murdered by underground bands between January 1 and January iO, says Reuter’s correspondent in Warsaw. There were 31 similar cases in December.