Poland took a step toward removing the president of the country's top court, kicking off a showdown with the nationalist opposition ahead of a parliamentary election next year.
Police entered the Constitutional Tribunal's premises late on Friday as its president, Bogdan Swieczkowski, and his deputy were served with a one-month suspension. Polish President Karol Nawrocki returned to Warsaw after ordering his plane en route to Senegal to be turned back, he said in a post on X social media platform.
Local TV footage showed Swieczkowski, a close associate of former justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro who fled to the US to avoid arrest, on the court's grounds, with police preventing him from entering the building.
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The move marks a dramatic escalation in a long-running feud over the tribunal, which the previous nationalist administration stacked with its own judges. The European Union's top court ruled in 2021 that the tribunal isn't independent and impartial in its rulings.
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“The constitutional tribunal was politicized under the previous government,” Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of the Group of 20 ministers in Atlanta on Friday. “What is happening has the purpose of allowing the majority of duly elected judges to make the tribunal function again.”
Prime Minister Donald Tusk returned to power in 2023 with a pledge to restore the rule of law, but his attempts have been stymied by the opposition-backed president. Supporters of the Law and Justice party, which ruled the country for the previous eight years, along with its leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski have been staging protests in front of the court for weeks in anticipation of the government's move.
“Restoring the rule of law is our duty,” Tusk said in post on X late on Friday. “After years of lawlessness under the Law and Justice government, this is a difficult and sometimes painful process that requires decisive action. There is no other way.”
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Kaczynski lashed out at the move.
“This is the first case of its kind in the world,” he said in a post on X. “Starting today, Poland is becoming a police state, and from there it's a straight path to authoritarianism.”
Polish ambassador to China, Jakub Kumoch, who was appointed under Law and Justice administration, resigned from the post on Friday in reaction to the “events” in Warsaw, he said in a post on X. Supreme Court Chief Justice Zbigniew Kapinski issued a statement, strongly protesting the police actions and the decision to suspend Swieczkowski.
US Ambassador to Poland Tom Rose commented on the situation in a post on X, saying “the events unfolding tonight at Poland's Constitutional Tribunal are very serious indeed.”
“We appear to be witnessing an unprecedented confrontation over the government's use of state power and the independence and authority of a constitutional institution, he said.”
The tensions have paralyzed the court, which rules whether the laws are consistent with the constitution. While the parliament has filled vacancies for some of the justices, Swieczkowski doesn't recognize them and the president has refused to accept their oath of office. Meanwhile, Nawrocki continues to ask the court to review some laws but the government doesn't publish its rulings.
Rose acknowledged that “both sides offer sharply different accounts of what happened and why.”
“America is on Poland's side. It is not our place to judge or interfere in its internal affairs,” he said. “Our concern is for the stability, security, and democratic future of a country we are proud to call our friend and ally.”
Last month, parliament appointed Maciej Berek, top legal adviser to Tusk's government, as another judge to the Tribunal in a bid to break the impasse. Nawrocki refused to swear him in.
“I need to be sure that our judges will walk into that building and that everything will be in accordance with the law,” Tusk said last month. “Maybe it won't be very elegant.”
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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