The Polish Minister of Justice has announced a bill for the reform of the judicial system, the aim of which is to align the Polish judicial system with the needs of the European Commission and restore the independence of the courts. The reform is necessary to have access to European Union funds. But the adoption of the project is not certain, as the Polish president has promised to veto it.
Considering the excitement of the events following the arrest of former minister Mariusz Kaminski and his deputy Macej Wasik, it is truly admirable that the meeting between President Andrzej Duda and Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Monday went very calmly.
According to the Polish Presidency, foreign policy and other important issues were discussed and the meeting took place in a constructive atmosphere. In response to journalists’ questions, the presidential office also announced that the president does not intend to dissolve the Seimas and does not intend to sabotage the work of the new liberal government.
Monday’s statements stand in stark contrast to the firestorm of passion unleashed by the arrests of Kaminski and Wasik. Supporters of the Law and Justice party, ousted from power by democratic elections, took to the streets across Poland.
Karol Guzikiewicz, president of the Gdańsk shipyards union, is one of the leaders of the protests.
“Today I am the president of the Solidarity trade union in Gdańsk, and in 1988 I was with Tusk, but today we are on opposite sides of the barricades. What we fought for in 1988 is now in danger. Our freedom, democracy and what “Tusk is going against the Constitution. What he did two days ago will only help Putin. If anyone comes to the presidential palace like this, the first to open the champagne will be Putin in Moscow,” Guzikiewicz said.
Kaminski announced in prison that he was a political prisoner and that he would go on a hunger strike to protest the actions of the authorities. However, what was most striking was the president’s speech, in which he promised to protect the freedom of absolutely honest politicians and their spotless reputation.
“I want to assure you one thing, I will not stop in the fight for a fair and just Polish state. For a fair and just Polish state for ordinary citizens, as I promised my voters in the election campaign of 2015 and 2020. For me, this it also means that I will not have peace until Minister Mariusz Kaminski and his collaborators are free citizens again, just as they should be, they are free from prison again,” Polish President Andrzej Duda said.
Nor have Prime Minister Tuski’s recent statements been notable for their lack of passion and emotion. Tusk accused Duda of acting in favor of the Law and Justice party and of sowing chaos and instability in the party’s electorate. Tusk advised Duda to stop the game which brought the country to a very dangerous situation.
However, what is happening around Kaminski and Wasik is not the first passionate spectacle caused by the clash between Tusk and the Citizens’ Platform and the Law and Justice party supported by President Duda.
In mid-December, before the Christmas holidays, the image disappeared from Polish public television broadcasts. The new government appointed new leaders and a new board, but the outgoing group managed to leave the screen blank in protest.
When he came to power, Tusk promised to put Poland back on the path to democracy in 24 hours. It was clear, however, that what the Law and Justice Party had done in its eight years of government could not be reversed so quickly.
For its part, the Law and Justice party has begun to spread rumors that Tusk’s government intends to destroy everything Polish and sell the Polish state to Germany. These stories have not fallen on deaf ears.
Monday’s truce shows that President Duda is pushing the limits of his capabilities. On the one hand, in a parliamentary country, the president’s opportunities to intervene in daily politics are limited anyway. On the other hand, if Duda manages to call emergency elections, the liberal forces led by Tusk will win them even more powerfully, if regular elections in October and the parliamentary seats of the Right and Right party dry up even more.
“Even though that goal has been announced, I think the public opinion right now is that even if early elections were to be held, the current opposition, the Law and Justice Party, would lose them even worse than they lost in the elections on October 15. It is possible that they would lose so much that they could overturn the president’s veto in the new parliament,” commented sociologist Andrzej Rychard of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
However, other political observers predict that a very turbulent period lies ahead, in which neither side will give in and Tusk’s plan to reunify the highly polarized nation will not come to fruition, at least for now.
At the same time, Tusk must take into account the fact that the euphoria that erupted in the West when he came to power, which among other things brought Poland cheaper loan offers, an increase in interest from foreign investors, an increase in shares of Polish companies on international markets and other good things, will not last forever.
However, Tusk and Duda must both remember that there is a war just behind the Polish border, and Putin’s close ally, the Russian politician Alexei Zhuravlyov, threatened only last week that, after Ukraine, Poland will be the next in Russia’s sights.
At the same time, it is very difficult for Tusk to fulfill one of his main promises, namely to bring money from the currently frozen European Union funds back to Poland. First, the president can veto any law passed by the current government to recover the money. Secondly, the prerequisite for getting the money back is reform of the judicial system, which is very difficult for the Tusk government to do without going against the constitution itself.
2024-01-15 20:12:00
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