Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said on Saturday that ambassadors Jakub Kumoch and Paweł Soloch, who have resigned from their posts, were “pressured by the staff of the president,” Karol Nawrocki, to do so. He added that pressure is also being put on candidates for upcoming ambassador posts.
On Friday, Jakub Kumoch announced that he had resigned as ambassador to China. Kumoch had been Poland’s ambassador in Beijing since September 2023. On Saturday, Paweł Soloch also announced that he had resigned as ambassador to Romania. They said the move was a reaction to the situation surrounding the Constitutional Tribunal (TK). Both were appointed by then-President Andrzej Duda.
– This is indeed an unfortunate situation, unprofessional behavior. Let us also remember that they did not do this on their own; they were pressured to do so by the president’s staff, just as candidates for ambassadors were previously pressured not to run. Scandalous behavior – Sikorski said on TVN24.
– These gentlemen (Kumoch and Soloch) have proven that they are not fit to be career diplomats – Sikorski said.
The foreign minister was asked whether someone from the Presidential Palace is calling Polish ambassadors or their circles and urging them to resign. – Yes, there were such calls, both in this case and previously, last week, because the so-called Foreign Service Convention is soon to take place, at which new candidates for upcoming ambassador posts will be selected, and there, too, there is pressure to withdraw candidacies – he said.
He said this is scandalous. – Because it is a usurpation of influence over the foreign service, for which – I remind you – I answer to the Sejm, the lower house of parliament, and if necessary even to a prosecutor. This is the Presidential Palace’s notion that the government is to be held accountable while the Palace does the governing – whether in matters of officers, matters of judges, or matters of the Foreign Service Corps. Completely unacceptable – the foreign minister stressed.
Sikorski was also asked about the situation in which “President Karol Nawrocki, entering the Tribunal at night and saying that the president is coming, physically pushed aside Judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, who had taken over leadership of the Tribunal as the longest-serving judge.”
– The president is physically stronger than the judge, and he showed it, but the situation is, again, scandalous, because the fact that someone is president does not mean that he is allowed to do anything – Sikorski said.
– The president acts on the basis of and within the limits of the law. The fact that he is, in protocol terms, the first person in the state does not mean he can replace other people in the state. He cannot walk into an operating room, he cannot walk into your home or mine, he cannot replace a priest in celebrating Mass, and likewise he has no right to walk into the Tribunal as he pleases. I, for example, would not let him into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs without an invitation – the foreign minister added.
He was asked about the words of Szymon Hołownia, chairman of the Polska 2050 parliamentary club, who believes that President Nawrocki and Prime Minister Donald Tusk should sit down and “reach an agreement on the Tribunal.”
– I believe it is enough to follow the constitution, which means that judges are chosen by the Sejm, not by the president. If we were to accept that the president’s ceremonial roles amount to sovereign power, then, as I already mentioned, it would be consent to a usurpation of power. So for such an agreement to be possible, or some kind of reset – even though on the right, I remind you, that is a dirty word – the president would have to back down from his attempt to seize power in violation of the constitution – Sikorski said.
A crisis has been under way at the Constitutional Tribunal since Friday evening. It was announced that a suspension of duties had been ordered for TK President Bogdan Święczkowski and TK Vice President Bartłomiej Sochański. Prosecutor General Waldemar Żurek filed motions to lift their immunity. Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, as the judge with the longest judicial service, was declared the person leading the TK. President Karol Nawrocki cut short a trip to Senegal, returned to Poland and went to the Tribunal’s headquarters.
After leaving the TK building, the president announced that he was convening urgent consultations with parliamentary groups, arguing that the constitutional order had been violated. Prime Minister Donald Tusk, for his part, said that “restoring the rule of law is our duty.”
Paweł Szefernaker, head of the president’s cabinet, read the president’s statement after Nawrocki left the TK. “Tonight there was a violation of Poland’s constitutional order and a forcible seizure of a constitutional organ of the state,” Nawrocki said. (PAP)
