Polish president wants referendum on constitution in 2018

FILE - In this Monday, Mach 13, 2017 file photo, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of the ruling Law and Justice Party speaks at a news conference in Warsaw, Poland. Poland's Foreign Ministry said Tuesday, May 2, 2017 that French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron made an "unacceptable" comparison when he likened Poland's government to the "regimes" of Russia's Vladimir Putin and Hungary's Viktor Orban. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski, File) (The Associated Press)

Polish President Andrzej Duda and his wife Agata Kornhauser-Duda walk during the celebration of the Constitution Day, commemorating the adoption of Polish constitution in 1791 in Warsaw, Poland, Wednesday, May 3, 2017. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski) (The Associated Press)

WARSAW, Poland – Poland's president says he wants the country to hold a referendum next year on possible changes to the nation's 20-year-old constitution.

President Andrzej Duda, who hails from the ruling conservative Law and Justice party, spoke Wednesday, on the national Constitution Day holiday.

Duda says he wants Poland to be a place "where there are no unfounded privileges, where there are no better castes of citizens, where all citizens are united."

Law and Justice leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski has long said he wants a new constitution. Kaczynski says the current one, which went into force eight years after communism's collapse, entrenched privileges of ex-communists in the social structure.

Political opponents denounced the plan for the 2018 referendum as an attempt to move toward a more authoritarian political system.