Poland's top court finds communist vetting law to be unconstitutional

Poland:The Polish government is set for a showdown with the country's highest court after it declared unconstitutional a law forcing academics, journalists, scientists and business people to declare whether or not they had collaborated with the secret police (SB) during the communist era.

The judgment is a huge setback for the ruling Kaczynski brothers, who have made the vetting or "lustration" of prominent Poles a cornerstone of what they call the "moral renewal" of Poland.

Critics call their campaign a witch-hunt.

In a packed chamb er yesterday evening, the head of the constitutional court, Jerzy Stepian, declared the law unconstitutional.

"The law cannot be used for revenge . . . the [SB] documents cannot be used for purposes other than protecting us from threats to democracy in the future," he said.

President Lech Kaczynski has already threatened a "brutal solution" to the lustration problem, promising to throw open all SB files after this verdict.

The law came into force last March and would allow authorities to impose a 10-year work ban on anyone who lied on their declaration about SB involvement.

The Kaczynskis say the law would complete Poland's negotiated transition to democracy in 1989, when the SB files remained closed and some former communist officials remained in public life. In their view, choosing political evolution over revolution sustained a network of ex-communists who joined forces with businessmen to divide the spoils of the new, democratic Poland.

But there was widespread criticism of the law, which relied on incomplete and often unreliable SB files. Critics said its goal was to punish enemies of the Kaczynskis and not one-time informers.

"People who collaborated simply declare it and that's that. They're not fired and they keep their job," said Krzysztof Iszkowski of the right-wing Dziennik daily. "The problem is people who know they didn't collaborate, but who cannot be sure there is nothing in the file to suggest otherwise. It's Catholicism meets Stalinism: confessing to the things you did and confessing the things you didn't do."

Many leading intellectuals and left-wing politicians defied the law, including Bronislaw Geremek, a former Polish foreign minister and Solidarity activist. He said last week that he would rather give up his European Parliament seat than answer to what he called the Kaczynskis' "Orwellian-style ministry of truth".

According to Polish media reports, government ministers applied huge pressure on the independent constitutional court in recent days.

Prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski suggested that judges were not above the law and should themselves be vetted.

Yesterday, a government MP applied to view the SB files of all 15 constitutional court judges.