The District Court in Legnica dismissed on 26 November the lawsuit filed by the authorised representative of the electoral committee of Tadeusz Kielan, who demanded that the electoral committee of Irena Rogowska apologise for describing T. Kielan as the liquidator of the rural Lubin municipality. The court ruled that the programme of merging the rural municipality with the urban one, promoted by Kielan during both rounds of the election campaign, in fact meant the abolition of the self-government of the rural Lubin municipality.
The vice-president of a municipal company and, at the same time, a candidate for mayor, decided to sue Mayor Irena Rogowska under the electoral procedure because he considered the information published by her committee—that after winning the election he would be the liquidator of the rural municipality—to be untrue.
As municipal officials write, “posters and banners bearing the Irena Rogowska committee’s name displayed slogans that, as it turned out, were true: ‘Kielan will abolish the municipality’ and ‘Let us save the municipality from liquidator Kielan.’”
The authorised representative of Kielan’s committee, Marek Dłubała, requested the removal from campaign materials of information about “Kielan the liquidator,” a public apology and a payment of PLN 10,000 to the Lubin-based “Palium” association.
The outcome of the case is known. As reported on the Lubin Municipality website:
The District Court in Legnica ruled that the lawsuit against Mayor Rogowska’s committee should be dismissed in its entirety and that the Kielan committee should bear the court costs. In the reasoning for the decision, the court stated that “it cannot be considered that these campaign materials contained information inconsistent with reality. The collected evidence shows that Tadeusz Kielan, a candidate for mayor of Lubin Municipality, provided in his election programme for the incorporation of Lubin Municipality into the city of Lubin, and thus… its physical abolition. In place of two local-government units, one local-government unit would be created, common to both the rural area and the city. Although he stated that he intended to achieve this through a referendum, this does not change the fact that the information disseminated by Irena Rogowska’s committee was true. [...]
Moreover, while serving as the Lubin county head, Tadeusz Kielan carried out a reform of some institutions, offices and educational establishments, resulting in their abolition in the local area and relocation to the city of Lubin.
Lubin Municipality/ii