A 23-year-old student who is running for parliament in Poland has ended up in hot water with her party over a vote-seeking Internet striptease.
"Party political broadcasts like this should not exist," Tomasz Kalita, spokesman of the opposition Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), told the daily Gazeta Wyborcza on Thursday.
"Every candidate has the right to make their own campaign material, but there are limits," he insisted.
In her 40-second ad posted on video-sharing site YouTube, candidate Katarzyna Lenart sits in a chair caressing her hair as a kitsch soundtrack plays, and then proceeds to strip.
As she takes off her bra, the word "Censored" flashes across the screen, followed by the slogan "Want more? Vote SLD. Only we can do more".
Political science student Lenart, who is on the SLD's slate in the southeastern city of Lublin, had more than 122,000 views on YouTube by Thursday.
Defending herself, she said that she decided to make the ad to raise attention after a previous run of the mill broadcast failed to spark interest.
"I thought it was time to cause a stir," she said. "My campaign targets young people, and young people are only interested in controversial stuff, unfortunately," she told Gazeta Wyborcza.
"I don't think it was vulgar or obscene. You can hardly see anything," she added, not that it had taken guts to strip.
Kalita, 32, said it was a particularly wrongheaded method for a candidate from a left-leaning party.
"I don't like it. I take a feminist, egalitarian approach" he said.
"I don't think this sort of ad has its place in left-wing politics. We should be enacting a ban on sexist advertising," he added.
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