The last issue (2 May) of Gazeta Wyborcza, the main Polish liberal daily, carried an interview with the current Polish president and the Civic Platform (ruling party) candidate in the upcoming presidential elections. Bronisław Komorowski said the following (among other things):

"I do not want to be the president of Polish people's conscience, although my own conscience has been largely shaped by the Catholic Church. The role of a president is not to resolve moral dilemmas. The head of state should ensure that the state would not deprive its citizens of the freedom to take personal decisions in accordance with their deepest convictions. State law must take into account different ethical sensitivity of the citizens. Let the people themselves decide about their lives, as much as possible".

Is it only an election gimmick („electoral sausage”, as we say in Poland)? Perhaps? But even if this is so, this sausage is more delicious than any other offered by other candidates. Moreover, one should not forget that Mr. Komorowski has recently ratified the Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence which is still condemned by the Church and its political allies. He did it at the office of the Women's Rights Center, what is also meaningful, although it can be, and actually has been interpreted as a yet another election gimmick.
I am not sure how flexible is this English idiomatic expression, but in Polish, a „sausage” can be either „electoral” or true, and I saw his signing the convention with my own eyes, so even if he decided to do it before elections simply to strengthen his political position, it is praiseworthy – isn't it the very nature of „de facto” democracy?

Despite the affirmative tone of this comment, I haven't decided yet, if I vote for him. His democratic and secular turn is very new and he is still conservative in other fields. His last decisions and declarations, however, are certainly worth mentioning and taking in to account. No other serious candidate has said or done anything more promising. And we are not discouraged by the fact that he will certainly not use the police or any other law enforcement agency to put Catholics into psychiatric hospitals or do anything like that to satisfy the most fierce, authoritarian anticlericals! We do not support their vision of secular state. It was abolished in 1989, (with our help and support to some degree), and we hope it will not return, no matter who tries to impose it: anti-liberal and antidemocratic Catholics or identical anti-Catholics.