The former conservative authorities left the party judiciary and media to Poland, says Michal Šuldrzyński, editor-in-chief of the portal of the Polish daily "Žečpospolita" in an interview with "Vreme".
Police in the public service, in the presidential palace, protests and occupations of public media buildings are just some of the images coming from Poland in the last few weeks, since she took office the new Government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
In the October elections, Poland received a new government made up of the liberal Civic Coalition, the Center-Right Third Way and the Left. This means the conservative, right-wing Pravo i Pravda (PiS) party of Jaroslav Kaczynski changed after eight years.
The latest in a series of news is that former Minister of Police Marjuš Kaminski and his deputy Macej Vasik, who arrested in the presidential palace at the beginning of the year, went on a hunger strike, accusing the current government of being political prisoners. On January 17, the court ordered the forced feeding.
The case of two former parliamentarians and high-ranking officials of today's opposition conservative party brought supporters of that party to the streets.
"No one expected that the situation is so complicated and difficult in Poland when we talk about the rule of law," said Michal Šuldrzyński, editor-in-chief of the portal of the Polish daily newspaper "Rzeczpospolitej" in an interview with "Vreme".
Parallel legal system
The current situation is the result of the rule of PiS for the last eight years, according to Šuldržinski, who thinks that the former authorities have somehow created a parallel legal system.
"They failed to create a new legal system, but they started the process." So, for example, we recently had a Supreme Court decision in which a part of the judges considered that Kaminski and his deputy were members of parliament. The other chamber said they were not. That's the situation in Poland, in a nutshell," he explains.
In 2015, Kaminski and Vasik were convicted of abuse of office while they were in the anti-corruption body.
According to the indictment, they violated procedures during the secret operation against the deputy prime minister in Kaczynski's former government, whom they wanted to prove was corrupt.
According to the law in Poland, if a person commits a crime intentionally, he loses the right to be a member of parliament.
President Andrzej Duda, close to PiS, however, decided to pardon them, so that they could be in the government and parliament, even though the verdict was of the first instance.
"For the first time, it happened that someone was pardoned, even though the court's decision was not final," says Šuldrzinski.
The European Union has been in a long-running dispute with Poland over judicial reforms that critics say violate the rule of law, limit the independence of the judiciary and undermine the primacy of EU law.
It's Brussels launched several actions against Warsaw, imposed fines and withheld certain funds, such as money to mitigate the consequences of the corona virus pandemic.
One of the latest judgments of the European Court of Justice from June 5, 2023, is related to the publication of the membership of judges in associations, non-profit organizations or parties. The court ruled that it violated their right to privacy and could be used to influence them.
PiS created a new chamber of Supreme Court judges and changed the members of the State Judicial Council, which is the only body that can propose judges for nominations.
Based on that, our interlocutor explains, all judges who were nominated or promoted in the last eight years through the new chamber, and there are about three thousand of them throughout the country, are considered controversial.
"They nominated judges in the regional courts, the Supreme Court and many other courts." It kind of created a dual legal system. So we had a situation where we have a trial and three judges, where two of them say they don't want to work with the third judge because he was chosen by a new chamber, which means he is not fully independent. We have had many such cases. Those problems grew and led to a situation where we now have complete chaos," says Šuldrzinski.
Media control
Just a few days earlier, at the end of December, footage of police forces entering the public service building appeared in the media.
During the campaign, Tusk promised to change the situation in the public media and stop propaganda, so, according to Shuldrinski, it was expected that he would do "something spectacular" as soon as he took office.
"That was one of Donald Tusk's first promises. Due to legal entanglements, it turned out to be very difficult to do. The easiest way was to elect new members of the Board of Directors under the new law. However, the government was afraid that the president would veto the law. They were looking for a solution that does not involve changing the law," explains Vremen's interlocutor.
Donald Tusk's government hoped that there was a loophole in the law through which they could remove the top people of the public service. First, the Ministry of Culture, which is responsible for public service, decided just before the holidays to cancel the Management Board and to order a new one to be elected.
However, according to the decision of the court in Warsaw, that procedure was illegal, which, according to our interlocutor, initiated protests in Poland.
"You have to know that the election results were close." The current government won 11,5 million, but the opposition got 7 million. Even if the majority voted for the change, PiS still has significant support. A big debate started in Poland about what to do with public media. Members of Kaczynski's party began to occupy the buildings of television, radio and the Polish news agency, and a huge chaos was created," Šuldrzinski assesses.
Liquidation of the public service
As the first step failed, the Minister of Culture decided on a procedure that was already considered before the election and which many lawyers said could be done, namely the liquidation of the public service and a request to the court to appoint a liquidation manager.
The second step turned out to be legal.
"The main news channel was switched off for several days. The main criticism of the opposition was that this is happening for the first time since the state of war in Poland in the early eighties, which is actually true. It was a bit disturbing for society, but a few weeks later he started working again," says Šuldrzinski.
The Polish Media Law dates back to the 1980s, when martial law was declared in the country in an attempt by the authorities to confront the political opposition at the time, especially Lech Walesa's Solidarity movement.
A special law on public service in Poland states that it cannot be completely abolished, so the move by the Ministry of Culture only changed the legal status, which prevents them from being financed without a court decision.
"We were without the main news program on the first channel for two days, but now completely new people are doing it and we, as the media, follow them and see what they are doing." I would not like to judge them now because they need time to prove that they respect the standards. "I can't imagine that they can make a worse program than the one we had," says Šuldrzinski.
Freedom of the media
The new management said it is open to cooperation with those who have not violated professional standards. Most of the technical staff has returned, but many presenters and journalists have moved to private Republika TV, which is sort of like Fox News in Poland.
When PiS took power in 2015, one of the first moves was to appoint people close to them in the media, who consistently reported positively about the government. Media workers who did not agree were fired or forced to quit.
"Public television was a shame for me as a journalist. It was not journalism but pure propaganda. If public television launches a hate campaign against the opposition leader, which Tusk was at the time, when they say he is not a Polish patriot but a government envoy in Berlin, it has nothing to do with journalism. It is shameful and completely politicized," said Shuldrzinski.
Through the state company Orlen, which bought the media house "Polska Press" in 2020, the government gained control over 20 local newspapers, 120 regional weekly magazines and 500 portals, and soon replaced the editors with loyal people.
"According to Polish laws, they will not have any consequences for the work they did," explains the editor-in-chief of the portal.
"In Poland, a journalist is any person who works for a media outlet that is registered in court. There is no journalistic status defined by journalistic associations. In Poland, we have several journalist associations that are completely politicized, unfortunately," he emphasizes.
Independent, professional media were left without advertisements during the PiS rule, which put their survival in question.
"We have two things that have usurped media freedom in Poland." The first is the state of the public service and they were really right-wing conservatives. Another thing is advertisements. Unfortunately, what remains from the time of communism is that the main advertisers are state-owned enterprises. For example, for the past eight years, advertising money has gone exclusively to pro-government media. "Any newspaper that tried to be professional did not receive a single cent from advertising," says the interlocutor of "Vremena" and adds that 55 percent of companies in Poland are state-owned.
The new Government will need time to rebuild the damaged one the rule of law in Poland and establish a relationship of trust with Brussels, in which Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who served as President of the European Council from 2014 to 2019, will play a key role.
"I hope that the new government will not look for shortcuts and will succeed in establishing the rule of law." I hope that this turbulence has paved the way for the establishment of the rule of law in Poland", concludes the interlocutor of "Vremena", the deputy editor-in-chief of the Polish daily "Zečpospolita", Michal Šuldrzyński.
Thousands of people gathered in Tirana for a new anti-government protest. Demonstrators threw stones at police and set fire to the entrance to the Ministry of Agriculture, while law enforcement responded with tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets.
The French Ministry of the Interior estimated that there were around 410.000 people at the protests, while the CGT union stated that there were close to 800.000. In Paris, the police used tear gas and water cannons
Extraordinary parliamentary elections are held on Sunday, October 25. 6.451.292 voters have the right to vote, and voting will take place at 8.392 polling stations. Election silence lasts until the polling stations close at 20 p.m
Publicist Dejan Lucic was arrested on suspicion of causing panic and riots with claims about election day, the prosecution announced.
Can a list with 45 percent of votes get a majority in the Assembly? It can. The key is in the census and the distribution of mandates. Here's how it works in Serbia
There is, literally, no difference between the one who claims it is day in the middle of the night, or the one who claims to be a giraffe, from the claims we read on billboards: that Vučić is working to unify Serbs and that Serbia is doing better and better day by day.
The pre-election arrests due to the alleged "overthrow of the state" testify to the regime's panic. The bad news for them is - they can't arrest the whole people who decided to defend themselves from progressive beatings and election theft
The ring that tightens around Ćaciland Student list is getting narrower. Because there are more and more spoiled people who see the false prophet for what he is: a street obscener who is fighting Serbia
The archive of the weekly Vreme includes all our digital editions, since the very beginning of our work. All issues can be downloaded in PDF format, by purchasing the digital edition, or you can read all available texts from the selected issue.
See all
