Polish President Andrzej Duda (center) with former State Secretary Maciej Wąsik to his left and former Minister Mariusz Kamiński to his right. The two leaders of the right-wing PiS party were arrested in the president’s palace on Tuesday evening. Image Jakub Szymczuk / AP
On Tuesday evening, Polish parliamentarians Mariusz Kamiński and Maciej Wąsik were arrested by the police. The place of the arrest was very strange: the palace of Polish President Andrzej Duda. Earlier in the day, the pair had taken refuge there while they were wanted by the police. After the judge issued an arrest warrant in the morning, officers who had to pick up the parliamentarians were initially reluctant.
For a day, Poland was captivated by the hunt for the two politicians, who were recently convicted of abuse of power. Everyone knew where Kamiński and Wąsik were: after their visit to President Duda, they even came outside to speak to the press present. “We are not hiding,” Kamiński said. “We are with the President of the Polish Republic.” Although they are formally entitled to enter the palace grounds, the officers did not enter until later in the evening. The arrest took place when Duda had briefly left his palace.
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Arnout le Clercq is Central and Eastern Europe correspondent for de Volkskrant. He lives in Warsaw.
According to the judge, the two politicians were guilty of abuse of power in a major corruption investigation during the first period of government of the right-wing nationalist party Law and Justice (PiS) from 2005 to 2007. They were also convicted in 2015, but the PiS-affiliated President Duda pardoned them shortly after the right-wing party won the elections. Afterwards they held high positions: Kamiński served as minister responsible for the secret service and later became Minister of the Interior; Wąsik was his state secretary.
Controversial pardon
Duda was criticized for the pardon: he would give his political friends a hand over his head. In addition, there were doubts about the legal validity of the presidential pardon because he had not waited for the appeal. The Polish Supreme Court decided to reopen the case, which led to another conviction at the end of last year. Duda still supports his pardon.
The case of the two parliamentarians is a new chapter in the showdown between the new government and the old government that has been going on for weeks now. Prime Minister Donald Tusk sees the conviction as the return of the independent judiciary in Poland, which was hampered for eight years by the populist politics of PiS. At the same time, the judiciary is still dealing with the legacy of that period. PiS has dug itself deeply into various institutions and courts. Through these channels, she also tried to put a stop to the arrest of the two politicians and the withdrawal of their mandates.
Criminal act
It was of no use. Then the pair, who say they are innocent and that the conviction is politically motivated, turned to the Polish president. He received them warmly and had his picture taken with them. Duda recently emerged as an antagonist of the new government. Tusk said it was shameful that he harbored the two wanted politicians and pointed out that this is a criminal offense.
According to Radio Zet, the police seriously took into account the scenario that the wanted politicians would fly by helicopter to the president’s residence on the Baltic coast. It didn’t get that far. The two were arrested around eight o’clock in the evening. This put an end to a new curious plot twist in Polish politics. Remigiusz Mróz, writer of (political) thrillers, wrote on
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2024-01-09 21:06:41
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