Polish court begins hearings on anti-communist vetting law

(WARSAW) - Poland's highest court on Wednesday began weighing up whether a new vetting law aimed at exposing collaborators with the communist-era secret police is in breach of the country's constitution.

In a televised sitting, the Constitutional Court ruled it would begin hearing a case brought by the ex-communist Social Democrats and Poland's human rights ombudsman, who are contesting the new law championed by the conservative government, which would drastically extend an anti-communist dragnet.

The court also rejected a separate motion brought by parliamentary Speaker Ludwik Dorn, a key ally of Poland's ruling Kaczynski twins, calling for the case to be adjourned until after May 15, the deadline for officials in a host of public professions to file declarations about their past.

The so-called "lustration" law, which came into force in March, drastically extended the dragnet of earlier legislation, which required some 30,000 lawmakers, government ministers and judges to make sworn declarations stating whether or not they collaborated with the communist-era secret police.

The expanded measures oblige some 700,000 Poles -- academics, journalists, managers of state-owned firms, school principals, diplomats and lawyers -- to file such affidavits or face the sack.

The court's decision to debate the constitutionality of the new law is seen as a setback to President Lech Kaczynski and his identical twin, Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who made purging Polish public life of communists a pillar of their successful election campaigns in 2005.

Two key public figures -- European lawmaker and former foreign minister Bronislaw Geremek and Poland's first post-communist prime minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki -- have been removed from honorary posts in Poland after refusing to comply with the new vetting law.

Geremek, 75, has denounced the new law as "creating an Orwellian-style ministry of truth" in Poland, while Mazowiecki, 80, has called it humiliating.