The president of Poland, the ultra-conservative Karol Nawrockihas presented this Thursday a motion before the Constitutional Court to ban the Polish Communist Party (KPP, by its acronym in Polish), arguing that the objectives and activities of the organization include “totalitarian practices of communism” that would replicate the socialist regime that governed the country between 1945 and 1989.
The president has argued that both the objectives and activities of the KPP include “totalitarian methods and practices of communism” and “assume the use of violence to obtain power and influence in state politics”, according to the recorded text, collected by the Polish network TVP.
Nawrocki’s motion is supported by the Political Parties Lawwhich establishes that if the Constitutional Court determines that the objectives or activities of a political party are incompatible with the Constitution, it will immediately issue a resolution to eliminate it from the registry, although for the moment neither the Justice nor the party has ruled.
However, it is not the first attempt to ban the party, despite the fact that It does not have any elected representative or in Parliamentneither in the Senate, nor in local governments nor in the European Parliament. In December 2020, the Prosecutor’s Office and the country’s then Minister of Justice, Zbigniew Ziobro, of the nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS), asked the Constitutional Court to outlaw the activities of the KPP for, according to him, inciting totalitarianism in its charter of principles.
Ziobro currently resides in Hungary and is wanted by the Polish Prosecutor’s Office on a total of 26 charges, including leadership of an organized criminal organization and the use of nearly 150 million zlotys (35 million euros) to finance the Israeli Pegasus spy system, targeting businessmen, politicians and opposition journalists.
For its part, the KPP, already awaiting its response to Nawrocki’s motion, then responded by claiming that “the entire argument is based solely on historical and tries to blame the current KPP for all the mistakes of the previous systemwhich was not communism, but an attempt to introduce socialism, the positive aspect of which was social reforms.”
Institutional clash
Nawrocki also announced this week his veto to the appointment of 46 new judgesa decision that intensifies the confrontation with the coalition government led by Donald Tuskwhile both accuse each other of going against the country’s constitutional order.
Nawrocki, aligned with the ultra opposition Law and Justice party, justified his rejection because the new magistrates “question the constitutional and legal order of the Republic of Poland” and supported his veto on the right granted to him by a 2012 Constitutional Court ruling.
The Polish president stressed in a statement that he will not grant promotions or give general approval to those judges who “they listen to the bad advice of the Minister of Justice(Waldemar) Żurek, who encourages judges to question the constitutional and legal order of the Republic.”
He finally added that during the five years of his term, assumed this summer, “no judge who questions the constitutional powers of the president, the Polish Constitution and the Polish legal system can count on a nomination.”
The situation further exacerbates the judicial crisis that Poland is going through since in 2015 the previous PiS Government implemented a reform that politicized the National Council of the Judiciary (KRS) by making the appointment, dismissal and disciplinary management of judges subject to the Executive.
The current Tusk Government has promised to “depoliticize” the KRS, giving judges the power to appoint council members and setting experience requirements, as well as limiting the access of judges appointed under the previous Government to the Supreme Court.
President Nawrocki has been against any “purge or discriminatory treatment of judges” appointed under the 2015 reform and has warned that he will use his veto against laws that question the status of these judges.
The result is a prolonged institutional clash, with reforms of the Ministry of Justice approved by the Government but blocked by the president, which keeps open a deep crisis of the rule of law in Poland.