Washington Post interview with Polish President

[Jaga]

Today Washington Post has introduction to Poland's distressing situation, followed by the interview with pres. Duda. He avoids answering questions about sudden changes in Polish law and attempts to debilitate Polish law system. Here is a part:

Is Poland taking an authoritarian turn? Its new president explains. DUDA's answers are in bold
By Lally Weymouth

After the Cold War, Poland began slowly to remake itself, and by the last decade it had become a beacon of freedom and a model for economic reform. But nationalist undercurrents persisted in the country’s politics. In the mid-2000s, the right-wing nationalist Law and Justice Party held power briefly; last year, the party came back in force, capturing the presidency and the majority of the Parliament. Now it appears to be dismantling many of the country’s democratic checks and balances, starting with its highest court. The new Polish government refused to seat the justices appointed by the previous government and passed a law requiring a supermajority of judges for rulings. President Andrzej Duda, elected in May, is heading to Washington this coming week to attend the Nuclear Security Summit. Duda spoke with The Washington Post’s Lally Weymouth this past week in Warsaw about the court and other matters. Edited excerpts follow:

In the West, many are concerned about the battles here over the constitutional court. The previous Parliament appointed five judges, two perhaps improperly. You are a lawyer. Why didn’t you swear in the other three judges, all of whom were ruled valid by the constitutional court?

The answer is simple. The [new] Parliament had passed a resolution invalidating the five judges appointed by the prior government.

So instead, in the middle of the night, you swore in four judges appointed by your party’s government?
The Parliament passed its decision before the constitutional court made its decision.
The constitutional court has ruled that the parliament’s decision is invalid. Your prime minister even refused to publish the court’s ruling, which is actually illegal.

The constitutional court in Poland has no authority to assess resolutions [of Parliament].

You’re saying that one independent branch of government, the court — which is the equivalent of our Supreme Court — has no authority here?

According to the Polish constitution, the constitutional court does not have the authority to assess resolutions through which judges are nominated.

Your party has a majority in Parliament. So it vetoed the appointment of the judges made by the previous Parliament without waiting for the court to rule, right?

That was the decision made by the Polish Parliament, known as the Sejm. . . . I’m sorry, but nobody has the competence to stop the Sejm from working.

The Venice Commission, a European multilateral institution, ruled that the government’s effort to alter the workings of the court endangered not only the rule of law but also democracy and human rights.

If the constitutional court passed its judgment without looking at the resolution passed by the Polish Parliament, then by doing this it violated —

Wait a minute. The court said the law was invalid.

But still the law was in force. The constitutional court is bound by the binding law, and this is very clearly stipulated in Article 7 of the constitution.

So are you arguing that the court has to abide by the very law it has declared illegal? . . . Aren’t you taking away the court’s independence?

The independence of the constitutional court was not violated whatsoever.

People in the West are concerned that Poland is sliding away from democratic standards.

I think that if the public opinion in Western Europe and the United States had access to reliable information on how the current opposition tried to take ownership of the constitutional court last year, then it would be very clear about the essence of this dispute in Poland.

Why should one branch — namely Parliament — be allowed by a simple majority to change the functioning of another independent branch?

Because there was a deep violation of democratic rules by the former Parliament. It tried to take ownership of the constitutional court.

Your party’s government has basically taken over the public media. The former heads of the public media were dispensed with, and your party’s members were put in charge. What do you think of that?

I don’t think that this situation is extraordinary, because after every election, the new government makes changes in the public media. The people who were working in the public media during the former government were nominated by the former authorities.

There is no longer an independent prosecutor. The prosecutor’s role has now become part of the justice minister’s portfolio. How do you feel about that?

Such a solution was introduced in Poland after 1989, when we cast off the bonds of communism. This is connected with the responsibility of the government for the internal domestic situation security in the state and the public order.

There is much curiosity about your party leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

My former party leader. Because the day after the elections, I resigned [from the party].

Well, the leader of the ruling party. It is said that Kaczynski, a former prime minister, is pulling the strings and is really the man in power in Poland, even though he’s only a member of Parliament. Reportedly, you and the prime minister were chosen by him. What’s your relationship with him? Does he tell you what to do?

People who were critical of me as a candidate running for the presidency will keep saying that I am not an independent president. But today, I am the president of the Republic of Poland. And any decisions I am taking, I am taking on my own responsibility.

Okay, but can we talk about Kaczynski? In my reporting, it’s said here and in Washington that he’s the most powerful man in Poland.

He is the leader of the party that today has the majority in the Polish Parliament. However, Andrzej Duda is the president, and Beata Szydlo is the prime minister. I believe that both myself and Madame Prime Minister feel a personal responsibility for the issues we are dealing with and for which we are taking decisions.

the rest of the interview was about the situation in Russia and Ukraine.

[Jaga]

one of the responses under the article explains the other side ... why the current government was so upset with the judges. There is some truth that the sudden change in tribunal was political with the previous government also

OK, let’s recap the root of the “crisis” caused by the Civic Platform in cahoots with the post-communist SLD which transpired in June 2015. Since then, at least the post-communists reflected on their mistake and apologized – through Leszek Miller, former PM – for bending to the temptation (additional political favors) offered by the Civic Platform.
1. Prior to June 2015, the former president, Komorowski (hailing from the Civic Platform, former Sejm Marshal) works with Rzeplinski (the Chief Justice of the Tribunal Court) to fashion an updated TC statute under Article 197 of the Constitution.
2. After the shocking loss by Komorowski in May 2015 to Andrzej Duda, and fearing the loss of parliamentary majority in the Fall of 2015, the Civic Platform together with Rzeplinski (the TC chef Judge!) goes into overdrive not only to overhaul the TC statute, but to fashion it so that they could stack the Court (14:1) with additional Judges whose tenure expired late in the year. The number of Judges in question was 5. The goal was to create a “fire wall” with the ability to block any/all legislation by the future Law and Justice majority, a tactic used successfully in the years 2005/2007.
3. It is extremely important to note, that when the new statute was rammed through the Parliament (Sejm), controlled by the Civic Platform, the actual date of the parliamentary elections was not known, yet. The date of October 25 for the election was set by Komorowski after the new statute passed into law.
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4. The Law and Justice Party vehemently voiced their objections that the Civic Platform was breaking the Constitution and parliamentary procedures with the version which finally was rammed through the Sejm. Since 1989, no prior Sejm elected TC Judges in advance, ever.
5. No Euro-Commission, no Venice Commission, no mainstream media (east or west) voiced their reservations or objections or anything! No mass hysteria in the media. No objections in Gazeta Wyborcza. No KOD or its demonstrations (they formed later). None.
6. October 8, the Civic Platform-controlled Sejm nominates 5 TC Judges. The tenure of 3 expires November 7, the tenure of 2 expires December 3 and 9, respectively.
7. In terms of American perspective this would be like: Chief Supreme Court Roberts, conspiring with the US Senate to write Amendment #28 to assume the “death” of say 5 SC Judges and then nominating their “replacements” ahead of their “death”. Simply preposterous!
8. The new – Law and Justice-controlled - Sejm gathers on November 12. It is important to note, that had the new Sejm assembled on November 6, the question of the “excess 3 Judges” would have been a moot point. The pre-selection of all 5 TC Judge-nominees would have been ruled unconstitutional by Rzeplinski (the co-author of the flawed June 2015 statute!) himself.
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9. It is also important to note that a TC Judge- “nominee” is not deemed a TC Judge unless/until he/she is sworn into office by the President. To the point: none of the “excess 5” have been sworn into office by the President.
10. On December 3, the President swears in 4 of 5 Judges nominated by the new Sejm under a new statute (under Article 197) of November 19.
11. Everything else after this is a “he-said she-said” scenario because the Constitution is flawed when it comes to the TC. Each party can summon a legion of Constitutional lawyers to support its claim.
12. Even the Venice Commission opinionated that both parties broke the flawed Constitution.
The only solution to solve the mess created by the irresponsible action of the Civic Platform of June 2015 is to amend the Constitution. It has to be a political solution.
Kaczynski has called for a meeting of all the parties in the Sejm for the week following Easter.
Let’s see if the “destructive” opposition summons responsibility and comes to the negotiation table which would provide a platform to solve this Flawed-Constitution crisis.

[Jaga]

here is a very down to the point and unbiased analysis of an American who lived in Poland about the current situation:

Interesting to read all of these Polish arguments in the WaPo. As an American who lived in Poland for many years since both before and after it became an EU member, what I see is that there is no good guy in this just as there is none between the Democratic and Republican Parties in the US. Both are completely corrupted, both using undemocratic tactics in the name of democracy, only each party has a different agenda which supports a different group of people.

From what I can conjecture, the ousted party in Poland was too connected to the weird link between the "reformed" communists and western globalization interests. The PiS has recently been compared by one writer with the Tea Party in the US, which claims to be a populist movement but in truth it is trying to control the US by virtue of strict evangelical Christian ideology whereas PiS is driven by the Catholic Church.

From what I see with limited knowledge, it appears that PiS is excusng its own undemocratic behavior because that's what the prior administration did. Both have apparently abused the justice system to their own advantage. Eye for an eye, two wrongs do NOT make a right, something we often hear here to justify an incredible hypocricy. Hillary Clinton justifies her connections to Wall Street, for example, by saying that she receives less financial support from them than Obama did. Somehow, this transforms a negative into a positive? Meanwhile the Republican Party snickers at the corruption of the Democratic Party while it is a fact that it is even more highly influenced by financial corruption.

Bottom line, the people are being duped while fed a bunch of lies from all sides to win their votes. By no means intending to let the "reformed communists" off the hook, it looks to me like PiS is aiming to exploit the situation to set back the clock on social reform that is not dictated by the Church in the same way that the Republican Party is aiming to do here.

[pieter]

Very good Washington Post interview and interesting analysis of the American who lived in Poland. This is from a different perspective than we usually get. News about the political situation is so biased and black and white today. Only Contra or Pro government, few nuanced opinions.

[Jaga]

Pieter, yes, I also thought that this was a good and different perspective. Thanks for reading this.