Narkevič: Today is the Black Ribbon Day for national minorities

“Today’s vote showed the real face of politicians and their attitude toward national minorities” – in this way Jaroslav Narkevič, the vice chairman of the Seimas, comments the deletion of notations of bilingual tablets from the draft of the Law on National Minorities. The politician AWPL argues that his party will be pushing to restore deleted postulates to the project.

“We have finished the second stage and that is very good, it is a step forward – we are closer to the adoption of the law. Regarding the content of amendments that have been adopted, we can say that today is the Black Ribbon Day for national minorities. The vote showed the real attitude of politicians – those who govern and those who do not. They are determined not only not to improve the situation of national minorities but even to worsen it,” says J. Narkevič.

The vice chairman of the Seimas Narkevič announces that AWPL will continue the fight to enable national minorities to use their mother tongue in a public life. In the immediate future members of the Polish party intend to propose amendments to the adopted today edit of the project.

“Undoubtedly in the near future we will submit amendments to the current edit. We do not change our opinion but the viewpoint of other politicians is clear. We knew that the road to the realization of the law is not easy so we wanted to have this stage completed (adoption of the draft of the law on second reading, ed.). Now, we will be systematically discussing and persuading coalition partners that by voting for today’s amendments they turn their back not only on national minorities but also on their electorate. In their platform they had favorable notations for national minorities and many habitants of Lithuania voted for that program,” emphasizes J. Narkevič.

The Seimas will return to discussion of the draft of the Law on National Minorities in the autumn.