Should Kamiński and Wąsik sit down?

In the coming weeks, the executive section of the criminal department of the territory Court for Warsaw-Śródmieście will recognise the application of Mariusz Kamiński and Maciej Wąsik, sentenced to 2 years' conviction A ruthless prison. The convicts request that the final judgement of the territory Court in Warsaw of December last year be rescinded – according to the typical of politicians it is irrelevant, as the case closed their pardon by president Andrzej Duda.

If the application is rejected, the court will have no choice but to order the execution of the judgement of the territory Court, and Kamiński and Wąsik will be brought by the police to the prison nearest to their whereabouts. Unless the president pardons them again – for now, however, it excludes this possibility, claiming that the pardon of nearly 9 years ago was effective.

Regardless of what the court decides, the dispute over whether Kamiński and Wąsik should go to jail and lose their ticket can shortly divide us as intensely as the dispute over changes in TVP. How do the rations unfold?

Can individual be pardoned?

The dispute has 2 dimensions: legal and political. At this first level, as in the full area of justice after 8 years of the regulation of the Law and Justice, there is simply a large deal of confusion.

On the 1 hand, we have the 2015 presidential pardon. The law of grace is simply a direct constitutional prerogative of the head of state, the courts cannot restrict it – the president and his supporters convince. The problem is that Duda applied them at a time erstwhile the judgement against Kamiński and Wąsik was inactive not valid, the trial continued, and the defendants did not exhaust the anticipation of proving their innocence before an independent court.

The ultimate Court in its resolution of 2017 expressed its position that the president could not pardon individual before the judgement was finalized, it could only do so after the court's case was finished. A different opinion was expressed by the Court of Poland. However, in June of that year, the ultimate Court stated that the Court’s ruling ‘has no legal force’. The President's ruling of the territory Court was revoked and the case was re-examined. It resulted in a final conviction of late December.

The arguments of the ultimate Court seem more convincing. Presenting the reasons for the June judgment, SN Piotr Mirek said that “the application of the law of grace in specified a expression as the president did excludes the anticipation for the defendants to prove their innocence [...]. This is an presumption that cannot be reconciled with fundamental constitutional human rights, a citizen: equality before the law, presumption of innocence, right to court." In fact, under the law, no 1 is guilty unless he has been convicted by a final judgment. The president pardoned Kamiński and Wąsik before the final judgement was passed, so he pardoned those formally innocent – which is manifestly absurd.

The 2015 decision of the president interfered in the actions of the judiciary, violating the fundamental rule of division of power. As justice Mirek said: "The exercise of justice in the Polish legal order is the exclusive domain of the average courts and the SN and no another authority may exempt from this obligation." Even the president.

It can be added that the law of grace, a relic of monarchial power, if it should be in the liberal-democratic strategy at all, is only as a means of last chance, restoring justice erstwhile all measures of investigation before the courts have been exhausted. The usage of the logic that the president and the corresponding Przyłębska Court accepted to pardon Kamiński would turn them into any kind of “out of prison” card that the president can give to his supporters. Not even so much “you get out of prison” as “you don’t even gotta go to court.”

Services must not act above the law

And here we come to the second political dimension of the question whether Kamiński and Wąsik should go to prison. The stakes of whether they will be punished, are whether Polish democracy is able to effectively enforce from the explanation of the services protecting it, to operate within the limits of the law and not to abuse their powers and to hold the highest officials who have chosen to stand above the law.

This is how the courts of both instances assessed the actions of Kamiński, Wąsik and the CBA officers following their orders. According to the court, there were no grounds to organise provocations against Andrzej Lepper. The provocation that the CBA was trying to organize was not so much to detect corruption that the services knew was taking place in the self-defence-led Ministry of Agriculture, but to get Lepper and his people to break the law. And the state should prevent crimes, not incite them.

Nor can the political context of the full substance be overlooked. During the pre-election debate with Donald Tuski in 2007, Kaczyński, on the charge of the PO leader, that he had taken Lepper to the government, replied "yes, but I immediately sent services for him". These services, as can be estimated on the basis of the available knowledge, pursued organization objectives alternatively than those related to the fight against lawlessness. The PiS almost from the beginning of the Lepper coalition attempted to "consume the appetizer": strip off Lepper's party, take over her MPs – although he might not necessarily accept them consecutive to the PiS and absorb the electorate. If, as a consequence of the CBA's provocation, Lepper were caught in corruption, the PiS could succeed. As we know, provocation has sparked a political scandal, yet has led to the shortening of the Sejm's word of office and earlier elections. The PiS lost them, lost power for 8 years, but remained the strongest organization of the opposition. The self-defence politically did not last the 2007 elections, and her social electorate partially powered the PiS.

The Kamiński organization and Wąsik effort to present their actions as a heroic fight against corruption. And if somewhere in the information sound that comes from the Law and Justice in connection with the pardon dispute, there is any rational nucleus, then in the argument that putting them in jail would have a paralysing effect for the fight against corruption in Poland. However, given that the same names appear in the center Pegasus affair – where, as everything points out, the state utilized aggressive spy software to monitor the chief of staff of the opposition party, on the basis of shaky grounds – I would say that present in Poland we are dealing with a alternatively other problem. I personally feel as a citizen safer if Kamiński and Wąsik are punished.

Don't get blackmailed by the PiS

Should this be the punishment of a ruthless prison? It is doubtful that a more proportionate punishment would appear to be a suspended prison, combined with a sufficiently long ban on public functions. However, the court decided differently on the basis of existing provisions.

The question can be raised: would it not be better for political reasons if 2 PiS Members did not go to prison? If the court found that the presidential pardon had closed the case? due to the fact that if they hit, they will become martyrs for half of Poland, the PiS will do an even bigger circus than in the case of changes in public media, and the President, as he announced, will talk about the “political prisoners of the Tusk government”.

However, a serious, rather tiny European state cannot make the execution of the final judgement of the court dependent on concerns about how Kaczyński and the people of Pisa will react.

We can't avoid a fight anyway: if not a prison for Kamiński and Wąsik, it's their tickets. Indeed, gentlemen say that since the 2015 presidential pardon was effective, the 2023 ruling could not put out their seats as MPs. On this decision, the Speakers filed an appeal to the home of Extraordinary Control and Public Affairs, entirely filled with neo-judges, according to many non-judicial lawyers. Her conviction will so rise doubts.

How will all this end? I fishy Kamiński and Wąsik could go to prison for a short time. If that happens, the PiS will unleash hell, trying to make it a maximum political capital. As shortly as the public interest settles, the president will quietly pardon both convicts. Which should close the dispute about the extinguishing of the mandate – due to the fact that if the president pardoned them again, it means that he himself considers that the first pardon was not effective, and so the 2023 conviction was incorrect and caused the mandates of both politicians to expire by law.

PiS may feel differently and will fight Kamiński and Wąsik to the parliamentary benches. The Holownia can wait for a much more serious test than the banter with Mark Suski – due to the fact that if he is incapable to enforce the decision on 2 convicted MPs, then the Law and Justice Office will not be out of his head until the end of his term.