Polish Police Arrest Pro-Duda MPs Inside Presidential Palace As Constitutional Crisis Unfolds

There’s a bizarre but potentially serious constitutional crisis unfolding in Poland currently, after former Polish interior minister Mariusz Kaminski and his deputy Maciej Wonsik were arrested over allegations of abuse of power. A court has also sought to bar them from office for at least five years, a ruling which they have ignored. 

The whole thing is set against the backdrop of a high-drama showdown between Poland’s new government of pro-EU Prime Minister Donald Tusk (only in office for a month now) and the now opposition Law and Justice party (PiS). Kaminski and Wonsik were actually arrested inside the presidential palace of President Andrzej Duda, ally of the previous right-wing government. 

PiS is calling the pair “political prisoners” after a court sentence them to two years in prison for abuse of power stemming from their stint leading an anti-corruption office in 2007. Their enemies have further charged that they’ve ‘subverted democracy’. President Duda, however, had pardoned them for the crime back in 2015 – a pardon which he says remains valid and can’t be nulled by the court’s decision.

But Tusk has called the standoff “unbelievable” – also as angry PiS supporters gathered outside the presidential palace as the arrests unfolded. Tusk’s “Civic Platform” party considers it an “equality before the law” situation for which no political official should be immune.

The other side says that pro-EU bureaucrats are wasting no time in using all the powers of the state to declare open season on anti-Brussels political enemies, however.

“There is no rulebook for the prime minister or interior minister on how to act when convicts are in the Presidential Palace. This is clearly taking advantage of a situation in which no one will use force against such an institution as the president,” Tusk said at a tense press briefing.

According to a BBC description of Tuesday’s events: 

The Polish president said in a televised address on Wednesday that he was deeply shaken by the two men being jailed, and described them as honest.

The two MPs have been stripped of their parliamentary mandates, but both they and President Duda insist they remain legally elected MPs because of the pardon.

On Monday evening, the court issued a warrant to police to detain the men. Despite this, Mr Duda invited both to Warsaw’s Presidential Palace on Tuesday morning to attend a ceremony to swear in two of their former colleagues as presidential advisers.