WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Polish police on Tuesday arrested two politicians convicted of abuse of power who had sought refuge for hours in President Andrzej Duda's palace, sparking a dramatic escalation in the standoff between the new and previous governments.
Duda greeted members of the former ruling party at the presidential palace as police went to their homes to arrest them. Polish media reported that the men were arrested at the palace. Warsaw police did not provide any information, saying only that the arrest was made “in accordance with the court order.”
The events escalated a dispute between the new government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk and the conservative Law and Justice party, which ruled Poland for eight years until it ended last month after its defeat in October parliamentary elections.
Duda is closely associated with Law and Justice and makes it clear that he will reject Tusk's agenda. Duda's second and final term runs until mid-2025.
Tusk, who has vowed to restore democratic norms in Poland, accused the president of joining Law and Justice measures to create chaos and instability after the election defeat and said that Duda “must stop this spectacle must, which leads to a very dangerous situation.” Situation.”
The prime minister claimed the president was obstructing justice by giving refuge to the wanted men. At a news conference, he read out a section of the penal code that he said Duda had violated, which carries a prison sentence of three months to five years.
“I just want the president to know what his political friends tricked him into,” Tusk said.
At the center of the dispute are two senior members of the law and justice system, former Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski and his former deputy Maciej Wasik, who briefly left the palace to speak to journalists hours before their arrest.
“We’re not hiding,” Kaminski said. “We are currently with the President of the Republic of Poland until evil loses.”
Kaminski and Wasik were convicted of abuse of power for actions in 2007, when they served in a previous Law and Justice-led administration. Duda pardoned them in 2015, although legal experts argued that such pardons were reserved only for cases that had already been appealed.
In June, Poland's Supreme Court overturned the pardons and ordered a retrial. Kaminski and Wasik were sentenced to two years in prison in December. A court on Monday ordered police to arrest the two and send them to prison. They insist they are innocent, and Duda argues that the pardons are still valid.
On Tuesday, Duda invited Kaminski and Wasik to a ceremony at his palace where he named two officials who had worked for them as his new advisers. His office released a photo of him posing with all fours.
Earlier, Parliament President Szymon Holownia postponed until next week a planned meeting of the Sejm, the lower chamber of parliament, which was scheduled to begin on Wednesday.
Kaminski and Wasik, who were re-elected as lawmakers in October, had said they wanted to attend the meeting despite Holownia and others insisting that their guilty verdicts would strip them of their parliamentary mandates under the law.
Holownia said the situation had led to a “deep constitutional crisis… which does not guarantee that the Sejm's deliberations this week would be peaceful.”
Kaminski is a former head of the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau who, along with Wasik and two others, was convicted of abuse of power for inciting a provocation as part of a sting operation to determine their targets. This scandal contributed to the collapse of the first Law and Justice government in 2007.
Tusk's allies welcomed the arrests, saying they represented a return to accountability for officers. “This should be a warning to the politicians of the next generation,” Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski posted on social media.
Former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki was among the Justice and Justice Ministry officials who expressed outrage and described the arrested men as “political prisoners.”