Protection in the presidential palace
Duda hides convicted PiS colleagues from Tusk
January 9, 2024, 9:07 p.m
The power struggle in Warsaw is escalating: President Duda, once a member of the nationalist PiS predecessor government, is thumbing his nose at the new Prime Minister Tusk. Duda offers two ex-ministers a place to hide so they don’t have to go to prison. Now the police catch them.
Actually, Poland’s former Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski and his former State Secretary Maciej Wasik should have started their two-year prison sentence. But when police officers searched their apartments, they came up empty: the two MPs from the replaced ruling party PiS, who had been legally convicted of abuse of office, had flown out. A little later, the astonished Poles found out from a post from the presidential administration on X where the wanted people were: at a reception given by the head of state Andrzej Duda in the presidential palace. Officials arrested the MP that evening, as did the police in Warsaw on Platform X.
What seems like a farce is actually the escalation of a conflict between the new and old government camps in Poland, which could lead the EU and NATO country into a state crisis. The power struggle between the center-left government of Donald Tusk, which has been in office since December 15th, and the voted out national conservative PiS, from whose camp President Duda also comes, has escalated. A parliamentary session that was actually planned for tomorrow, Wednesday, was postponed until next week due to the chaotic situation. Tusk threatened Duda and PiS leader Kaczynski that they would be held responsible for “sabotage of the constitution.”
The two PiS MPs wanted by arrest warrant have apparently found protection in the presidential palace. In the afternoon, Kaminski and Wasik spoke up in the courtyard. “We are not hiding. Right now we are with Poland’s president until evil loses,” Kaminski said. He didn’t say how long they planned to stay there. Wasik called on PiS supporters to come to Warsaw for a demonstration against Tusk’s government planned for Thursday.
Duda is still convinced of a pardon
The case of the two PiS politicians has a long history. In 2015, immediately after the PiS came to power, Duda pardoned Kaminski and Wasik in a controversial decision. Both had previously been sentenced in the first instance to three years in prison for abuse of office. The reason for the conviction was an affair uncovered in 2007, in which the anti-corruption agency, then headed by Kaminski, was said to have deliberately orchestrated a corruption case in order to discredit the then Agriculture Minister Andrzej Lepper. Kaminski and Wasik appealed the verdict.
Last June, the Supreme Court overturned the presidential pardon of Kaminski and Wasik. According to the verdict, only those who have been legally convicted can be pardoned. Both had to face the trial again. At the end of December, the Warsaw District Court sentenced her to two years in prison. The court also ordered that both PiS politicians would not be allowed to hold public office for five years and would lose their parliamentary mandate.
Duda has emphasized several times in the past few days that, in his opinion, the pardon continues to apply – the leading constitutional lawyers in Poland see it differently. Both politicians had announced that they wanted to continue to fulfill their mandate as representatives and appear at parliamentary sessions.
Tusk threatens Duda
In the afternoon, a visibly upset Prime Minister Tusk sent clear words to Duda: “Mr. President, my fervent appeal for the good of the Polish state: you must stop this spectacle. It will lead us into a very dangerous situation.” The actions targeted the foundations of the state.
With regard to the president’s behavior, Tusk also quoted from the Polish penal code: “Anyone who obstructs or frustrates criminal proceedings by helping a criminal to evade criminal responsibility (…) will be punished with a prison sentence of three months to up to punished for five years.” And he warned: Duda and PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski would be held responsible for their actions. However, Tusk clearly ruled out a violent arrest of Kaminski and Wasik in the presidential palace.