President Karol Nawrocki, Poland’s head of state aligned with the right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS), canceled a Friday trip to Senegal and is heading back to Warsaw amid what his allies are calling a “coup d’état.”
Metropolitan Police Headquarters announced Friday that its officers are “carrying out statutory activities at the premises of the Constitutional Tribunal in Warsaw” — the nation’s highest court. Authorities have removed security from the premises and put up barriers around the area as they attempt to restore “public order” amid a forced change of leadership.
“At such a moment, the President must be in Poland. I’m interrupting my flight to Senegal. I’m returning,” Nawrocki wrote on social media.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a bitter political adversary of Nawrocki and the Constitutional Tribunal, took credit for the raid and said it was necessary to prevent lawlessness.
“Restoring the rule of law is our duty,” Tusk announced late Friday. “After years of PiS-led lawlessness, this is a difficult process, sometimes painful, and it requires decisive action. There is no other way.”
Judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, the longest-tenured judge on the Constitutional Tribunal, has been appointed interim president after the removal of court president Bogdan Swieczkowski. This was reflected on the court’s website.
However, the Constitutional Tribunal’s account on social media platform X issued a contradictory statement: “An unlawful takeover of the Constitutional Tribunal’s website has occurred. The President of [the Constitutional Tribunal] remains Bogdan Święczkowski, and the Vice-President is Bartłomiej Sochański. Ms. Anna Korwin-Piotrowska is not a judge of the Constitutional Tribunal. All persons participating in these actions are committing the crime of a coup d’état.”
At the center of the dispute is the appointment of a new judge to the tribunal, Maciej Berek, who was elected for the position by the left-controlled lower chamber of parliament.
PiS has questioned whether Berek’s career technically meets the requirement for judges to have 10 years’ experience as a legal adviser. The left wing has pushed back on this, and a war over definitions has developed.
Berek is required to swear an oath of office in front of Nawrocki, but the president has dodged any meeting that would allow such an oath to happen. The new judge previously tried to sign an oath addressed to Nawrocki as a substitute, but the Constitutional Tribunal — which is ideologically aligned with PiS — rejected the gesture.
Right-wing protesters have been standing guard outside the Constitutional Tribunal to prevent the Tusk government from installing the new judge, but the surge of police dispersed these efforts.
Beata Szydlo, a PiS-aligned member of the European Parliament, posted a video of the situation to social media on Friday night — calling it a “violation of all democratic principles.”
“Shocking scenes in Poland. Police, dispatched by the Tusk government, have forced their way into the independent Constitutional Tribunal. Security personnel guarding the building and the Tribunal’s documents have been removed,” she wrote on social media. “The Vice-President of the Tribunal is being denied entry to the premises.”
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/world/4786243/karol-nawrocki-poland-coup-d-etat-donald-tusk/
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