Campaigners are working hard to encourage Cork’s Polish community to take an active part in the upcoming local and European elections.
The Together-Razem Centre and MyCork association teamed up with the New Communities Partnership in March to begin educating Poles in Cork about the electoral registration process which is often confusing, especially for those with only basic English.
“The information campaign on what to do to register is quite poor,” says Wojciech BiaÅ‚ek, project co-ordinator with the Together-Razem Centre.
In order to register, explains Białek, prospective voters must fill out a change-of-address form, then have their address confirmed at a Garda station, where the form must be stamped before it can be submitted to the local council.
“From my own experience I have to say that Polish people are not sufficiently informed about this procedure,” he says. “They are also indifferent towards politics, and the whole registering process seems to them too long and too complicated.”
As a part of the campaign, a new information leaflet has been published and distributed in Polish shops, offices and language schools as well as after Sunday masses, where volunteers are helping with the filling-in of the RFA3 address forms.
The campaign has also organised community meetings at the Together-Razem Centre office and the Midleton Community Forum to help in going through the whole process.
Those who want to register must have been living in Ireland since September 2008. The campaign will last until 18 May which is the deadline for voter registering.
“Our votes will make a difference, regardless what most of us think about politics,” says Wojciech BiaÅ‚ek. “I believe that there are Polish people willing to decide what is happening on the street or area they are living in, and those have registered already and will go to polls this June.”
