New Polish regime sparks crisis by firing five judges

Poland has been plunged into a constitutional crisis after its new national conservative government fired five judges in the country's highest court and appointed their own.

The move by the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) has been condemned as illegal by opposition parties in Warsaw and was partially contradicted by Poland’s constitutional court on Thursday.

PiS leader Jarsolaw Kaczynski said the move, rushed through parliament late on Wednesday night, ended problematic appointments by the last, Civic Platform (PO) government that, he said, had politicised the court.

“The constitutional tribunal in today’s reality is an organ of [PO],” said Mr Kaczynski. “That is not acceptable and is why it had to be changed.”

But the move has caused uproar in Polish opposition and legal circles, who accuse the government of trampling on the law in a bid to bring the independent court under its control.

Solidarity movement

“This is not something that we got as a present, but something had to fight for,” said

Henryka Krzywonos

, a heroine of the anti-communist Solidarity movement, waving a copy of the constitution in the parliament on Wednesday.

In a similar vein, the Gazeta Wyborcza daily gave away copies of the Polish constitution with its weekend edition, telling its readers: "Let's get to know our rights before they take them away."

The crisis has seen a new group, the Committee for the Defence of Democracy, attract almost 40,000 members in just two weeks. Meanwhile, a poll in the conservative Rzeczpospolita daily found that 55 per cent of Poles see democracy in danger.

Political observers date PiS interest in the constitutional court to its last term in office a decade ago, when the court struck down several legislative packages by PiS.

Mr Kaczynski was infuriated, blaming the court for, as he saw it, hindering his overdue efforts to root out widespread corruption. But his rivals welcomed the court’s intervention as an important legal corrective to political overreaching.

Alarmed by the court crisis, Poland's former president Aleksander Kwasniewski warned in a radio interview that "the attack on the constitutional tribunal is a danger to democracy".

The row surrounds judicial appointments by the outgoing PO government, two of which were made ahead of time and widely viewed as legally problematic.

President Andrzej Duda, a PiS appointee, refused to swear them in and, on Thursday, appointed four new judges, which he described as an attempt to avoid a "politically one-sided" court.

“This should be a pluralistic institution and the politicians should keep to this rule at all costs,” he said in a televised address last night, demanding an end to the “unnecessary strife that can undermine the authority of the most important institutions of the Polish state”.

But many legal experts insist the constitutional court – not politicians – have the final word on its make-up.

Yesterday the court set itself a collision course with the government, striking out just two of the five original appointments.