Not even a period has passed since the fresh government was sworn in, and president Andrzej Duda has already reached for atomic weapons in relations with the parliamentary majority – veto. In addition to the budget bill, which includes, among another things, provisions allowing teachers to pay increases – which was 1 of the basic promises of the fresh majority.
The reason for the veto, at least to be made public by the Presidential Palace, was the presence in the bill of regulations allowing the transfer of up to PLN 3 billion to the public media in bonds as compensation for lost proceeds from the subscription. The president argues that he cannot sign the bill, financing the media "taken over" in a "illegal way" by the coalition on October 15.
President @AndrzejDuda:
I made a decision to veto the budget bill for 2024, which included PLN 3 billion for the public media. There can be no consent to this towards gross violations of the Constitution and the principles of the democratic regulation of law. Public media needs... pic.twitter.com/biSWjKqznN
— President's Office (@presidentpl) December 23, 2023
However, everything points to the president losing this confrontation. The parliament, contrary to the pressures of Duda, will not meet before the end of the year to consider its budget bill – the government majority will prepare its own, without 3 billion for public media. In the face of the president's veto, the Ministry of Culture announced that TVP, Polish Radio and PAP would be put in liquidation.
Communication from the Minister of Culture and National Heritage
In connection with the decision of the president of the Republic of Poland to suspend financing of public media, I decided to put the Polish tv S.A., Polish Radio S.A. and Polish Agency in liquidation... pic.twitter.com/gXXQMxNMrS
— Ministry of Culture and National Heritage (@kultura_gov.pl) December 27, 2023
The full presentation is terrible for Andrzej Duda: the president reached for the veto, subject to the force of his erstwhile party, took teachers as hostages, and as a consequence launched the procedure for the liquidation of public media.
Paper tiger and elephant in porcelain store
Andrzej Duda could not choose a worse subject to blackmail the fresh majority than the destiny of public media. due to the fact that a large part of the fresh coalition, most likely not excluding Donald Tusk, to the President's threat: “give us the public media, or I will starve them”, will gladly say, “please, we don't care.” Polish conservative-liberal center always had at least an ambivalent view of the thought of public media itself, in the civilian and 3rd Coalition The roads inactive deficiency liberal populists who would most gladly let these media collapse and sale their wealth.
Even the GO electorate, the 3rd Road and the Left, which tower in the sense of maintaining public media, is at the same time able to agree that after 8 years of government the presidents of the Novogrodzka nomination are in specified a condition that they request to usage the option zero, total, hard reset, allowing to plan these institutions again.
Veto Dudy gives the coalition on 15 October a very good excuse to carry out specified a movement at the lowest possible political cost. The government may now have reason to believe that he had no choice but to launch the liquidation procedure, due to the fact that it was president Duda who sentenced them to bankruptcy in revenge for no longer serving as propaganda for his erstwhile party.
The ministry's authoritative communication states that setting up TVP, PAP and PR in liquidation will “allow these companies to proceed to operate, carry out the essential restructuring in them and prevent workers' companies from being made redundant due to deficiency of funding”.
Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz, after all the doubts that he was accompanied by changes in public media, can now introduce himself as individual who defends these institutions against the irresponsible political play of the president and his political camp. The liquidation does not mean the closure of public media, it will act normally, but it opens the way for their profound change.
In another words, in the first confrontation with the government, the president turned out to be a combination of a paper tiger and an elephant in a porcelain store.
Duda succumbed to Kaczyński's pressure?
In addition, the veto does not look like the president's own decision, but the effect of the force of his erstwhile party, especially the president of Kaczyński. And nothing harms Duda's political position like the image of President-Adrian with President's Office, alternatively of his own policy, following orders from Nowogrodzka.
The president had good reasons to keep the distance to the dispute over TVP, PAP and Polish Radio. In the past, Duda himself made it clear that the tv that Jacek Kurski was doing did not like. At the beginning of 2020 threatening veto to the bill allowing the financing of public media bonds, the president forced Kurski's resignation from the chair of the president of TVP.
However, the president's success was short-lived, Kurki returned to the TVP as a board advisor, and in August he was re-elected by the National Media Council to be the company's president. The president was one more time played by Kaczyński.
Simultaneously TVP became full active in the presidential run on the side of Duda, on a scale unknown in the past of the 3rd Republic. Main issue News She showed as news material actually being the election advertisements of Duda, besides furiously attacked his main competitor, Rafał Trzaskowski, reaching even for anti-Semitic innuendos.
The President's distance to the dispute over the media was considered passive by the Law and Justice Party, bordering on the "failure". Kaczyński in an interview with Radio Wnet tortured the president: “I do not want to comment on the President’s words. The summary will come after the end of the term. If I had someway been president at this point, I would have found a way to solve the case in specified a way that public tv would broadcast the same programs as usual, they would have been broadcast by the same people, and those who have attempted an assassination effort would greatly regret this decision."
The veto reported after specified words will not be seen as the President's own decision, but as a reaction to Kaczyński's tudge. Which makes Duda look bad.
Explain it to the teachers
The president, on the occasion, stumbled upon teachers, police officers and another budget workers, who abruptly learned that the money the Sejm granted them could be lost as a consequence of a presidential veto.
The president assured him that he would shortly submit his version of the budget bill introducing the raise—what he did on Wednesday—but from the full riots the teachers and others waiting for the group's increases understood only that Duda as part of the PiS pushbacks with the government for the public media has been blocking long-awaited increases, taking the full social groups as "presents" of this dispute.
In this dispute, the President's camp has nothing to defend. The horse as it has been, everyone has seen and even conservative voters may feel embarrassed present that the Law and Justice organization is launching specified a extremist rhetoric—including comparisons to martial law and shouts about "the coup d'état"—and so extremist action as occupying the office of media companies in defence of something like this, for apology, October as stripes from News, Dutch interviews with Kaczyński or program Let's go.. besides posts for specified people as Samuel Pereiera or Michał Adamczyk – among people making tv propaganda of the last 8 years of the Law and Justice Office could not truly find individual with little problematic baggage than the latter.
The president has nothing to gain by implementing Kaczyński's policy
Then why was Duda a veto? There are voices that it was intended to be the first phase of a complex plan to shorten the Sejm's word of office and earlier parliamentary elections in spring, possibly together with local elections.
How would that work? If the government had added 3 billion to the budget bill for TVP, the president could have sent the budget back to the Constitutional Court, arguing that the budget financing the unconstitutionally seized public media itself is contrary to the constitution. The Court would support this argument and the president shortened the word of office of the Sejm – due to the fact that the correct budget was not presented to him on time.
There are 3 problems with this plan. Firstly, it means the constitutional crisis unknown in the 3rd Republic of Poland. The Constitution does not supply for specified a script and does not explicitly state that the president can dissolve the Sejm if the budget is declared unconstitutional. What the president can do in specified a situation is to interpret what it means to "present the budget within the time limit" – whether the presentation of an unconstitutional budget gives the right to shorten the word of office on the same rule as not presenting any. It could even happen that Duda announces a shortening of the Sejm's word of office, and the Sejm considers that the president had no specified right.
Secondly, PiS specified earlier elections would have lost even more than those on October 15. It has not passed to annoy people into Kaczyński's party, if by bending the law it forces earlier elections with the aid of its president, the anger and mobilisation of the democratic camp will only increase and the PiS will lose another fewer twelve tickets.
Thirdly, putting 3 media companies in liquidation means that the basic condition of this plan – the fresh majority will put media funds in the budget – will not be met.
Kaczyński is doing precisely what he accused of opposition in 2015-23 today: he de facto refuses to recognise the result of the election, that the coalition has the right to regulation on October 15. All activities of the Law and Justice Agency since 15 October have been striving to destabilize the state, to maximum polarization and to give the impression that in Poland we are not dealing with a average change of power, but fundamentally a coup.
This maneuver will deepen radicalization and marginalization of the Law and Justice. It is likely to end with the failure of local governments, a defeat in the Euro-election and a defeat in the race for the Presidential Palace. If Andrzej Duda wants to play the function of renewer on the right after the end of his second term, he truly should not implement Kaczyński's plans present – they will usage not only the organization but besides its president.
