Polish President Andrzej Duda announced his plan to pardon two jailed opposition politicians for a second time, hoping the move will ease growing tensions between the country’s new and former governments.
Former interior minister Mariusz Kamiński and his ex-deputy Maciej Wąsik of the Law and Justice (PiS) Party, which lost its majority in October elections, were jailed on Tuesday after an arrest at the presidential palace.
Initially convicted in 2015 for abuse of office while working for Poland’s Central Anti-Corruption Bureau, the two politicians lost an appeal court and were sentenced to two years in prison. Duda’s previous pardon decision was overturned by the Supreme Court as it was issued before the appeal court’s final ruling.
Duda has long claimed that the 2015 pardons were “definitive,” but on Thursday said he was launching a new pardon procedure. At the same time, Kamiński and Wąsik went on hunger strike, saying they were “political prisoners.”
I had said I would make every effort so that these men are free again, as soon as possible, so that they would be free people and not political prisoners. I hope this will also calm the unrest in our country.
Thousands of PiS supporters took to the streets of Warsaw to protest against the detention of ministers and the reform of state media introduced by the new government.
PiS faces numerous accusations of undermining the rule of law, and Poland’s new Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who has promised to restore EU democratic norms and unblock tens of billions of euros in frozen EU funding, has a lot of work to do to fix the state apparatus.
The Kamiński and Wąsik case highlights the judicial chaos in the country, with different courts, and sometimes different chambers of the same court, issuing contradictory judgements on the same cases. For instance, the Constitutional Court ruled that the Supreme Court was wrong in cancelling Duda’s pardon.
Nevertheless, a chamber of the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the October election results were valid. However, leaders of the former government argue that the new coalition’s efforts to restore the neutrality of state radio and television stations, as well as the national news agency PAP, are unlawful.
Tusk shut down the TVP Info news channel as part of an attempt to “depoliticise” state media. The resolution was adopted on December 19 and supported by a majority in Warsaw’s parliament.
