On the night of this Friday, strong units of the Polish Police have cordoned off the headquarters of the Constitutional Tribunal in Warsaw, in the open outbreak of a prolonged crisis over the composition of the body’s leadership, which has for months pitted Prime Minister Donald Tusk against his two main political adversaries: the leader of Law and Justice and former head of Government, Jaroslaw Kaczinski, and the current president of the country, Karel Nawrocki.
The institutional clash dates back to the beginning of this year, when Nawrocki, an ally of Kaczinski, refused to swear in three of the six magistrates appointed by Parliament. To this blockade was added the president of the Constitutional Court, Bogdan Swieczkowski, who refused to allow the judges elected by the current parliamentary majority to take office.
Hours before the Police were deployed, the Polish official agency PAP reported that Swieczkowski and his number two, Bartlomiej Sochanski, had been suspended for a month and that their profiles had disappeared from the court’s website by order of Judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska.
Shortly after, the Constitutional Tribunal itself released a message on its social networks stating that the page had been the object of an "illegal takeover", that Korwin-Piotrowska was not acting on behalf of the court, and that anyone involved in these actions "is committing the crime of coup d’état".
In an initial public reaction on social media, Tusk maintained that the restoration of the rule of law "is a duty" and that "after years of arbitrariness" "a difficult, sometimes painful process that requires determined action" has begun because "there is no other way".
The escalation has immediately moved to the outside of the building. The Warsaw Police has reported the arrest of three people who were trying to access the interior of the Constitutional Court and has launched a special operation against "aggressive behavior", after a group tried to "break the fence" surrounding the complex.
Given the seriousness of the situation, Nawrocki has canceled his official trip to Senegal and has announced that he is returning to the country. "At a time like this, the president must be in Poland," he declared, while Kaczinski, also through social networks, denounced that the court is suffering an "attack" by the "services of Tusk" in an unprecedented episode on a "global scale".
According to the leader of Law and Justice, "From today, Poland becomes a police state, and from there there is already a direct path to authoritarianism, and then to totalitarianism. The Tribunal is the guarantee of our freedom and sovereignty. Tusk's trampling of the law knows no limits".