I mean to talk about the failed Polish Coup in yesterday’s LinkSwarm, and with all that was going on this week I just forgot. So let’s cover it today.
Coverage of the October 31 attempted coup seems particularly poor, but here’s a piece from ABC.
Hundreds of anti-government protesters rallied overnight outside Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal to denounce the suspension of its president, a move they blame on the country’s pro-European government.
Police said they detained three protesters after some threw objects at officers and tried to break through the security fence around the court.
Polish President Karol Nawrocki — who opposes the pro-European government — turned back his plane during a flight to Senegal on Friday evening and returned home. On Saturday, he made his way to the Constitutional Tribunal despite the chaos and said he helped the suspended court president enter the building.
Nawrocki said that a “breach of Poland’s constitutional order” had taken place and invited all parliamentary parties to talks on Saturday in an effort to defuse tensions and find a solution.
“Since last night, we’re dealing with a massive constitutional crisis in Poland, the result of an illegal, forceful attempt to take over an important institution,” Marcin Przydacz, a top aide to the Polish president, told The Associated Press.
The government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk said it acted to restore the independence of the judiciary.
And by “independent,” he means “subservient to leftwing Euroelites.”
The government is a broad coalition made up of Tusk’s centrist Civic Coalition, the Left, and two more conservative groupings, Third Way and the Polish People’s Party, or PSL. Representatives of Third Way and PSL, along with several opposition parties, met with Nawrocki on Saturday, while Tusk did not attend.
The president’s camp is hoping the crisis surrounding the Constitutional Tribunal will erode Tusk’s parliamentary majority.
The protests over the long-embattled Constitutional Tribunal are likely to sharpen the battle between Poland’s pro-European government and its opponents, chiefly the main opposition party, national-conservative Law and Justice, or PiS.
Meanwhile, the Parliamentary Council linked to Nawrocki has formally condemned Friday night’s attempted takeover, describing it as an ‘unlawful coup against a constitutional organ of the state’.
The council, chaired by Deputy Sejm Speaker Marcin Horała, adopted the declaration during an extraordinary meeting on Saturday attended by presidential minister Adam Andruszkiewicz. It accused individuals acting without legal authority of receiving support from state security services in their attempt to seize control of the Constitutional Tribunal.
The declaration warned that accepting such actions would exclude Poland from the ranks of civilized Western democracies. It also condemned attempts to undermine the president’s constitutional prerogatives, calling for respect for the separation of powers and judicial independence.
The crisis has also exposed divisions within Tusk’s governing coalition. Deputy Prime Minister and Polish People’s Party (PSL) leader Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz met Nawrocki alongside Deputy Sejm Speaker Piotr Zgorzelski, emphasizing constitutional order, political stability and national security.
Poland 2050 leader Szymon Hołownia also attended the consultations, calling Friday night’s events ‘shameful’ and urging Nawrocki and Tusk to negotiate a constitutional reset. Hołownia expressed serious legal reservations about the suspension of the Tribunal’s leadership, while stopping short of calling it a coup.
Snip.
On Friday evening, the Constitutional Tribunal’s website announced the suspension of court president Bogdan Święczkowski. Shortly after, the protesters — including PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński and far-right politicians — began rallying outside the building.
The government says Święczkowski repeatedly broke the law and jeopardized the tribunal’s work. Święczkowski became head of the court under the former PiS government. Tusk has accused him of blocking judges elected by the parliamentary majority from taking up their posts at the tribunal.
Imagine if Joe Biden had Clarence Thomas removed from the Supreme Court because he was “jeopardizing the Supreme Court’s work,” sent capitol police to surround the Supreme Court building and tried to swear in three new Supreme Court justices the Senate had rejected, and that’s essentially what went down.
With Nawrocki returning and escorting the illegally ousted justice, the coup looks like it failed. Unfortunately, Tusk shows no sign of remorse. Or giving up.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has defiantly rejected any compromise over the attempted takeover of the Constitutional Tribunal, despite mounting criticism from his right-wing opposition and growing divisions within his own governing coalition. In a televised address on Saturday evening, 31 October, Tusk defended Friday’s attempted judicial coup carried out by pro-Tusk judges at the court, while two of his coalition partners engaged in emergency consultations with President Karol Nawrocki to resolve the constitutional crisis.
‘In certain matters there can be no compromise,’ Tusk declared, accusing Nawrocki and the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party of destroying the rule of law. He insisted that the newly elected judges were legally entitled to assume their duties and that police had merely protected them from aggressors. Tusk also suggested that those challenging his government’s actions were benefiting from—of course—Russian interference. He nevertheless announced no new constitutional reform initiative.
By contrast, Tusk’s Civic Coalition refused to participate in the presidential consultations, while the Left also rejected Nawrocki’s initiative.
(Hat tip: Gates of Vienna.)
If everything seems weird and deeply confusing, that’s because it is weird and deeply confusing. Tusk just decided that he had a parliamentary majority and that meant he could sweep aside legal but irritating obstructionism from the Euroskeptic President and his party by force. It didn’t work out.
Political conflicts between elected Presidents (the head of state) and elected Prime Ministers (the head of government) in European countries that have both is hardly unknown, but the conflict reaching the level of an attempted coup is, as far as I know, pretty much unique in modern western Europe.
With leftwing/Muslim riots still popping up in other EU countries, Tusk’s statist Europhillic allies evidently feel deeply resentful that Poland, which refused to let the EU ship unassimilated Muslims into their country, are completely riot free, and intend to do something about it by hook or by crook…
