President Duda: post-communist hydra has spoken out in PKW

The National Electoral Commission gathered on Monday at noon to deal with the decision of the unrecognized Extraordinary Control Chamber of the Supreme Court, which upheld PiS’s complaint against the PKW's rejection of the financial report of the PiS election committee for the 2023 elections.

However, the Commission postponed the decision until "the systemic regulation of the legal status of the Extraordinary Control Chamber and Public Affairs Chamber of the Supreme Court and the judges involved in the ruling of this chamber by the constitutional authorities of the Republic of Poland."

According to the Electoral Code, such a decision of the Supreme Court obliges the PKW to accept the report. However, the status of the Extraordinary Control Chamber and Public Affairs Chamber of the Supreme Court, which is responsible for considering complaints about the resolutions of the PKW, is contested by the current government, European tribunals, and some members of the PKW.

On Monday afternoon, PiS Chairman Jarosław Kaczyński commented on the matter. He assessed the decision of the National Electoral Commission (PKW) as "a very strong blow" to the democratic mechanism or even its "liquidation."

As he reminded, the Extraordinary Control Chamber and Public Affairs Chamber of the Supreme Court upheld PiS's complaint about the decision to reject the financial report of the PiS election committee from the 2023 parliamentary elections.

"We have a final and favorable decision for us," commented Kaczyński. He pointed out that as a result of this ruling, PKW must - and not should - approve the financial report of the PiS election committee. However, as Kaczyński noted, PKW "did not fulfill this legal obligation." In his opinion, this amounts to committing a crime under Article 231 of the Penal Code, which refers to the failure to fulfill duties and exceeding powers.

Referring to the decision regarding the PiS financial report for the entire year of 2023, Kaczyński pointed out that there is still no final decision from the Supreme Court on this matter. "In short, money should have been flowing all the time, and that was also the previous practice," he remarked.

Earlier, Kaczyński named all five members of the PKW who voted on Monday to postpone the meeting. "These gentlemen are: Ryszard Balicki, Ryszard Kalisz, Paweł Gieras, Maciej Kliś, and Konrad Składowski. These gentlemen make up the five-person majority in the PKW, which makes such decisions," he stated.

Kaczyński assessed that the current government accepts decisions of the mentioned chamber of the Supreme Court only when they are convenient for it.

"However, when they don't like these decisions, they simply don't implement them," he said. In his view, the actions of the government are "a blow to the rule of law" and "a direct attack on democracy."

PiS chairman also argued that "the only chance to maintain the democratic electoral process in Poland, including such a crucial element as free elections - presidential, parliamentary, local, or European - is support from society." He pointed out that next year’s presidential elections will be crucial, as their result - in his opinion - could determine the future of democracy in Poland.

In this context, Kaczyński called for donations, which PiS will allocate to the campaign of presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki. "You cannot run this campaign without money. This is the key issue today, the most important for the future of Polish democracy, freedom, the rule of law, but also for the future of Poland. We need these funds not for ourselves, but for the good of Poland," he said.

President Andrzej Duda was asked about the decision of the PKW at a press conference after the meeting of the presidents of the Visegrad Group countries in Wisła. Duda admitted that, due to this meeting, he had not reviewed the Commission’s decision in detail.

"If someone questions one of the chambers of the Supreme Court, if they use the term 'neo-judges', they are also questioning the presidential prerogative of appointing judges, the durability and stability of that prerogative. I will absolutely never agree to this and I will always defend the judges who were appointed and swore their oaths before the President of the Republic," he said.

The president stated that the source of the Supreme Court reform were "the problems that have plagued the Polish judiciary since 1989," including the presence of post-communist judges in the Polish judiciary, including those who were "tainted by rulings made during martial law or disgraced by participating in the system that enslaved Poles in the 1980s."

As he said, the goal was to cleanse the judiciary, because the judicial environment never cleansed itself. - "It required and still requires cleansing, and that is what the reforms carried out over the last years were intended to do," Duda said.

"This post-communist hydra, which continuously defends and nourishes the remnants of communist pseudo-elites in Poland, today once again spoke out, as I understand, in the PKW," Duda declared.

"I will fight it to the very end, I will never stop this fight, because it is a matter of making Poland truly 100% free from such remnants that should have long been gone and I will never stop this fight. However, the question is, of course, what influence this is trying to exert on the upcoming presidential elections, and that is a completely different issue that requires separate analysis," he added.

After the PKW rejected PiS’s election committee report in August, the party's government subvention (almost 38 million zlotys) was reduced by three times the contested amount, i.e., by about 10.8 million.

Furthermore, the nearly 26 million zlotys annual budget subvention was also reduced by 10.8 million. The consequence was also the return of the contested sum to the State Treasury, i.e., 3.6 million zlotys.

Another consequence of the rejection of the election report was the rejection of PiS’s annual financial report for 2023. PiS may lose its right to subventions for three years.