Post-solidarity Poland under the cyclically changing governments of the Civic Platform and Law and Justice becomes increasingly a state of chaos and anarchy.
Although the symptoms of this phenomenon were already seen earlier, the apogee followed the fresh parliamentary elections. This can be witnessed by fresh events related to the cancellation of public tv authorities, the pardoning of Maciej Wąsik and Mariusz Kamiński, or yet the cast of the position of the National Prosecutor.
Although conspiracy theorists claim that the disputes of both parties referring to the heritage of "Solidarity" are faked to manage electorates and divide the political scene among themselves, fresh events indicate that this is not just a cynical setup. Even if there erstwhile was specified an idea, the antagonisms between the PO and the Law and Justice have intensified to an degree preventing any civilised public debate between these groups. Even in abroad policy matters, in which both groups take a akin non-alternative pro-Atlantic course, there are bilateral accusations of pro-Russianity and pro-putinism. In fact, it seems that full consent occurs only at the joint Khanuese ceremonies in the Sejm.
Endless clashes and battles of both parties are not simply a theatre for the masses and political show, but they have certain social and legal consequences. First of all, the authority of the state itself and its highest organs suffers from this. A citizen cannot take the president seriously, who invites criminals into his cabinet, as he cannot trust the highest state officials deliberately and with full deliberate violation of the law. Secondly, the legal chaos preventing the average functioning of the state is increasingly apparent. At present, the law is applied in a two-track manner and decisions and acts taken are contested by both sides of the political dispute. It is not average for the president to question the final sentences of the independent courts. Nor is it average practice in a civilised country for the highest state authorities to interpret the laws in force in the same cases differently. An example of this was, for example, the conflicting rulings of the Constitutional Court and the ultimate Court, and more late the ruling of the Labour Chamber and the Chamber of Extraordinary Control and Public Affairs of the ultimate Court on the pardon of Wąsik and Kamiński.
Both power and opposition are instrumental in treating laws and interpreting them in terms of their own political objectives. Existing legal voluntaryism undermines citizens' assurance in the highest authorities and threatens the legal stableness of the state. If the judicial nominations made in the past period (the case of the neo-KRS and the neo-Judges) are contested, this necessarily puts questionable the legality of judicial decisions issued by defective judges. In a moment, it may turn out that parties dissatisfied with court judgments will question their legality for purely formal reasons.
This script leads to legal chaos in the state and the anarchization of public life. The current situation has no precedent. True, in the 1990s, we had a phenomenon called the “fallification of the law”, but the scale of this kind of pathology was much smaller than today. Is there a way out of this dead end? I am afraid that until there is simply a extremist change on the Polish political scene (and it is not likely to happen), the situation will not change.
Michał Radzikowski
photo profile fb PiS
