Deputy interior minister Jarosław Zieliński no longer supervises the police, State Protection Service and the new secret service operating within the interior ministry. The decision was made by the interior minister Mariusz Kamiński who had taken over the oversight of these institutions.
The revolutionary changes were confirmed by the decision of the head of the Ministry of the Interior and Administration. The document was published in the official journal of the ministry on Thursday.
The decision first mentions new duties of the deputy minister Zieliński. The most important thing is what's missing compared to the previous division of responsibilities.
No longer on the list of his competencies are, among other things, supervising of security and public order, protection of people, facilities and devices.
Furthermore, Zieliński is no liger responsible for supervising police internal security, the Border Guard, as well as chiefs of the Border Guard and the State Protection Service.
What's most important, however, is the lack of duties resulting from his superiority over the chiefs of: the police, border guard, state protection service, fire service and state civil defense. Zieliński's duties have now been reduced to overseeing the fire service and the state civil defense.
Zieliński will alsono longer supervise the new secret service, formed in January 2018 within the ministry of interior, namely the internal supervision bureau.
Kamiński's supervision
All of the aforementioned competencies have now been taken over by the minister Mariusz Kamiński. Only one of his predecessors has run the ministry the same way: Marek Biernacki, who was the interior minister in Jerzy Buzek's cabinet.
"A huge challenge for the minister, who at the same time is coordinating the special services. So, apart from the police employing 120.000 people, he will also have 5 other services on his head. His days will now have to last 48 hours," said an experienced Law and Justice politician.
Confetti and conflict
The weakening of Jarosław Zieliński's position, after Mariusz Kamiński had taken over the ministry, was foreseeable.
"They were at loggerheads already four years ago, after Zieliński had appointed Zbigniew Maj as Chief of the Police," said our interlocutor who had wished to remain anonymous.
Maj lasted only four months in the office. "The charges that recently dismissed police chief Zbigniew Maj may soon hear, will be serious," Kamiński said at the parliamentary committee in 2016.
"Zieliński did not consult appointing of the police chief with Kamiński. At the time, services were investigating Maj. The fact that after all these years Maj hadn't been officially charged by a prosecutor is a different story," a ministry employee told tvn24.pl.
The former police chief Zbigniew Maj was detained by the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau in spring of 2018. He was charged in connection with maintaining contact with journalists as the chief of the police. He claimed that he had become a victim of political war. "They tried to intimidate me and force me to testify against the chiefs of services from the PO-PSL cabinet," Maj said.
Nevertherless, relations between Zieliński and Kamiński weren't good from that point. Voices in the ministry also claim that Kamiński is not fond of Zieliński's functioning style, including the infamous confetti dropped from a helicopter by police officers, as well as dozens of events that he attends, mostly in the Podlasie region, home to Zieliński's constituency.
Autor: gf, Robert Zieliński (Robert_zielinski@tvn.pl) / Źródło: TVN24 News in English, tvn24.pl