“The fight to reverse the changes introduced by PiS must be conducted according to the rules,” the Financial Times said in an editorial on the dispute over Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal.
“Poland has found itself in an extraordinary institutional impasse,” the FT wrote in the editorial, which appeared on its website Monday evening.
The paper says the dispute shows the “dilemma facing Prime Minister Tusk’s pro-democracy government: how to restore the rule of law after eight years of state capture by PiS (Law and Justice) without having to resort to extralegal methods itself.”
According to the authors, the roots of the conflict lie in actions by PiS, which “stacked the Constitutional Tribunal and other judicial bodies with party loyalists.”
“Although political opponents have long accused Tusk of benefiting from confrontation, it is not hard to sympathize with his reformist government, which is constrained by institutional checks and balances – mechanisms that the previous government violated,” the paper said.
At the same time, the authors of the editorial warn that “circumventing constitutional procedures, for example by using parliamentary resolutions or by not publishing court rulings in order to bypass the judiciary” carries a risk: creating precedents that “could be abused by illiberal leaders in the future.”
According to the paper, events in Warsaw “have provided ammunition to right-wing populists in other countries,” such as France, where Marine Le Pen described them as “an apparent forceful takeover of a constitutional body” and accused Brussels of double standards on the rule of law.
“Poland, as well as businesses and investors in the European Union’s sixth-largest economy, urgently need a tribunal that will enjoy trust on both sides of the country’s deep political divide,” the paper writes, adding that next year’s parliamentary elections leave little room for compromise.
The paper suggests that a potential solution could be for President Karol Nawrocki to accept the Venice Commission’s conclusion that the head of state has no discretion when it comes to swearing in a judge properly elected by the Sejm, Poland’s lower house of parliament. In return, the paper argues, Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government would commit to a transparent, legally defensible procedure for resolving disputes over nominations.
“The key test for Tusk’s coalition, however, is not whether it can dismantle the PiS legacy, but whether it leaves Poland with checks and balances and institutions that no future leader will be able to manipulate,” the paper concludes.
Source: PAP
