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Warsaw court allows to call Polish leaders â€œducksâ€

04 November 2008 08:53 (UTC +04:00)

Warsaw â€“APA. Warsaw court rejected the complaint of Poland’s president Lech Kaczynskiâ€™s administration against columnist of Dziennik newspaper, who referred to the president and his brother and opposition leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski as â€œkaczkaâ€. The court ruled that a play of word was not slanderous for the Kaczynski brothers, APA reports. â€œKaczkaâ€ means in Polish as â€œduckâ€. The writers frequently use this play of word referring to the president and opposition leader calling them â€œducksâ€. Therefore the presidential organization went to law against the writers in the name of Dzennik columnist Jerzy Pilch and demanded to ban the word of â€œducksâ€ in the newspapers. The complainants consider that the word of â€œducksâ€ damages image of politicians. The court ruled that comparing people to animals does not always mean an insult.
The Kaczynskis previously took a humorous approach to the duck nickname.They made the duck a symbol of their Law and Justice Party during a 2005 election campaign. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who resigned from the post of Prime Minister after losing a 2007 election, has photograph taken together with the ducks in a Warsaw park in 2006.