Poland's Supreme Court ruled on Monday that presidential election, won by incumbent president Andrzej Duda, were valid. The court had earlier on examined thousands of electoral protests, including a bid by the centrist Civic Platform party for an election re-run, and decided that only 92 had valid grounds, yet had not had any impact on the final results.
"Presidential election of July this year are valid," the Supreme Court's Extraordinary Control and Public Affairs Chamber announced on Monday.
"The Supreme Court (...) confirms the validity of election of Andrzej Sebastian Duda as the President of Poland made on July 12, 2020," says the Monday's resolution adopted by Poland's highest court. As the chair of the chamber Justice Ewa Stefańska said, "the court had considered all circumstances, including those that hadn't been mentioned in electoral protests".
On Sunday (August 2), the Supreme Court's press office informed that all electoral protests had been examined. In total, over 5,800 protests had been submitted, of which 92 had been deemed partially or fully justified, yet having no impact on the final results of the vote.
In July, Poland's biggest opposition party, the centrist Civic Platform (PO), had petitioned the Supreme Court to declare the recent presidential election unfair to trigger an annulment and re-run.
The nationalist incumbent Andrzej Duda, an ally of the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, won the July 12 vote against PO candidate Rafał Trzaskowski by 51% to 49%, with the voter turnout higher than 68%.
But the opposition believes the government broke rules by too much campaign participation from the state administration and public broadcaster TVP, said PO spokesman Jan Grabiec said in July, after the official results had been announced.
"The scale was comparable to campaigning in Belarus and Russia," he told Reuters, confirming the legal challenge.
Duda ran an acrimonious campaign laced with homophobic language, attacks on private media and accusations that Trzaskowski serves foreign interests, and yet the government denies any electoral wrongdoing.
But European election watchdog - the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) - has said TVP was used as a campaign tool for Duda in a misuse of public resources.
His victory reinforced the government's mandate to pursue reforms of the judiciary and media which the European Commission says subvert democratic standards.
Źródło: TVN24 News in English, PAP, Reuters