Parliament rejects no-confidence motion against govt

Poland's Sejm (lower house) Thursday voted down opposition Civic Platform's no-confidence motion against the Beata Szydlo government. Szydlo herself called the motion "a pack of lies". Civic Platform's main charge against the government was its failure to respond to fascist slogans at a November 11 Independence Day march in Warsaw. In a debate preceding the vote, the party's leader, Grzegorz Schetyna, whom the motion proposed as prime minister in Szydlo's place, also observed that Poland's "true government" was not Szydlo's team but Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of current ruling Law and Justice party. Schetyna stressed that Kaczynski should be prime minister as head of the ruling party, not Szydlo, and complained that the present was "a unique concoction of dictatorship and anarchy".