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One night into two-year prison sentences for abuse of power, two convicted Polish politicians are to be pardoned by president Andrzej Duda – for an unprecedented second time.
Thursday’s latest twist in Poland’s real-life political drama saw Duda appear with the wives of Mariusz Kaminski and Maciej Wasik in a live television address.
“The ladies came to ask if I could bring about the release of their husbands as soon as possible,” he said. “At their request I am initiating pardon proceedings.”
The president said he hoped the move to free Poland’s most recent interior minister and his deputy, both from the former ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, would prevent “an escalation of events”.
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He was speaking from the presidential palace where, on Tuesday evening, the two men were hiding out until police showed up and led them away.
News of their imminent pardon prompted jokes on social media about the president’s political independence.
[ Former Polish minister starts hunger strike in prison after arrest in presidential palace ]
Shortly after winning the presidency on a PiS ticket in 2015, Duda pardoned the two party men for the first time. As former leading officials at Poland’s anti-corruption authority, they had been convicted of abuse of power and of using fake documents as part of a graft investigation involving land rezoning.
Both men denied all charges but, because Duda acted before their final appeal ended, the pardon faced legal challenge and was eventually set aside last year by the supreme court.
Thursday’s pardon announcement surprised many; as recently as last week, the president’s office insisted a second pardon was not possible because the previous, set-aside, pardon was valid.
“We do not accept this possibility,” said Grażyna Ignaczak-Bandych, head of the presidential chancellery, last week. “It’s like signing a contract twice, it’s a denial of your own competences.”
On Thursday Duda said he still believed his 2015 pardon was “effective and issued in accordance with the constitution”.
He asked that prime minister Donald Tusk’s government deal quickly with his second pardon request, however, as “both [men] are refusing to eat”.
Since Kaminski and Wasik were sentenced to two years each last month, half the original proposed sentence, both refused to enter prison.
Following their arrest and imprisonment on Tuesday they began a hunger strike. In a statement, Kaminski described himself as a “political prisoner” and “victim of political revenge” by the government.
Tusk, who took office last month, has dismissed the revenge claims as part of an escalating campaign to halt his government’s reforms to end PiS-era politicisation of public institutions.
[ After eight years of culture wars in Poland, 2024 has begun with more of the same ]
His government’s reforms of public media and cultural institutions have drawn considerable protest and, on Thursday, another demonstration by PiS supporters through central Warsaw.
With signs reading “This is Poland not Tuskoland”, PiS organisers said their “march of free Poles” attracted 300,000; Warsaw city hall spoke of 35,000 participants.
PiS chairman Jaroslaw Kaczynski repeated unsubstantiated campaign claims that Tusk, his long-time rival, is an agent of Germany and that the new administration is “no Polish government”.
Thursday’s images mirrored, on a smaller scale, demonstrations last year of more than one million Poles against the PiS government and its effective abolition of abortion.
Frustration by women voters, and a series of political scandals, saw the conservative PiS lose support but still finish first in last October’s general election. Short of an absolute majority, however, it failed to find coalition partners and entered opposition.
With an uneasy cohabitation looming until next year, when the PiS-backed Duda’s second term as president ends, the Tusk government did not say on Thursday how it would respond to his pardon request.
The two camps are already on a collision course over this year’s budget, a confrontation with potential to bring down the government by the end of January.
The prospect of a Polish cash crunch appeared to ease on Thursday when EU officials announced they will release, by early April at the latest, another tranche of funding frozen by Brussels during long-running rule-of-law rows with the previous government.
After talks in December, Tusk said Poland’s first €5 billion share of the EU’s post-pandemic recovery fund could be “unblocked at last”. With another €7 billion to be paid out in the coming weeks, requests worth €23 billion in total have been filed for the current year.
In return for the payouts, the Tusk administration has promised to expedite reforms “in the immediate future” to increase judicial independence.
In total Poland is entitled to €59.8 billion from the EU’s post-pandemic recovery fund, including €34.5 billion in loans and €25.3 billion in grants.
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