PKW rejected the PiS study from last year's election run and decided to cut the grant organization by PLN 14.4 million. That's 4 times the amount of money PiS had – according to the findings PKW – "inflate" illegally into your election run in 2023, utilizing public funds to do so. For example, by employing employees at the Government Legislative Centre whose main activity was to make run leaders, Krzysztof Szczucki, during the campaign.
The failure of PLN 14.4 million will be painful for the PiS, but not deadly. However, PKW may inactive reject the party's financial statements not only from last year's campaign, but from the full 2023 – and this may endanger to lose most of the yearly subsidy, which is the basic origin of financing of political groups in Poland. Indeed, this Law and Justice could not last financially.
Novgorod's reaction to this decision was predictable. The organization called for support from its supporters, Members and Euro MPs were placed under a peculiar "tax". The leaders of the Law and Justice have strengthened the narrative, dominant in the transmission of the organization at least since the arrest of Kamiński and Wąsik: Tusk, commissioned by Berlin, seeks to destruct the opposition in Poland, in order to break opposition to the change of the EU treaties, with which Germany wants to destruct Polish statehood. This kind of message does not deserve a serious polemic first due to its paranoid-conspiracy structure, secondly due to the fact that it is incapable to scope anyone but the largest Script concrete.
However, there is another communicative in consequence to the decision of the PKW: the PiS may have exceeded the rules and financed the run from public funds in an highly insolent way, but similarly, even if on a smaller scale, everyone acted. Punishing the Law and Justice alone would not only be hypocritical, but would besides make a precedent that threatens the stableness of Polish democracy, in which opposition must have the ability to act, and parties request money to act. The Law and Justice Office cannot, otherwise, be punished besides harshly, due to the fact that it would endanger to deepen the political, organization and constitutional crisis at a minute which poses a number of serious challenges to Poland. These arguments, unlike the conspiracy theories about Tusk destroying opposition on behalf of Germany, may scope reasonable people outside the strictest written bubble.
A akin reasoning can be agreed in 1 way: the current situation resembles playing board with an highly annoying cousin who refuses to follow the rules of the remaining players and frequently simply cheats. The caught is insulted, aggressively behaves, cries alternately, threatens and uses emotional blackmail, and yet makes it clear that he can flip the table if needed. At the same time, we can't truly throw him out of the game, due to the fact that he's a beautiful close household – even if 1 that doesn't even look good in pictures. What can you do in specified a situation? Especially erstwhile it's not a game and something as fundamental as the Republic?
Being the biggest organization of opposition does not give the card “you are getting out of prison”
Surely the solution is not to yield to specified a cousin. due to the fact that all concession will encourage him to behave even more insolently. If the PKW stated that despite the apparent violation of the rules by the Law and Justices could do nothing, and did not draw any consequences, in the eyes of much of the public, it would be a disgrace to this institution, undermining its legitimacy as a body to guarantee that elections in Poland are equal and fair.
The PiS is present the largest opposition party, in October it won 7,64 million votes, more than any another committee. This support makes the Kaczyński Formation an crucial actor of Polish public life, worthy of serious treatment, no substance how untruthful further conspiracy theories of Kaczyński or calls for cultural wars raised by Indigenous Black.
Being the biggest organization of the opposition, however, should not act like a "get out of jail" card in Monopoly. The fact that the PiS represents more than 7.6 million Poles does not give him immunity to the consequences of the abuses that this organization committed in power. Bringing consequences to politicians who are opposed present for what they did erstwhile they were in power is not the demolition of democracy, but the concern for its simple standards.
If the fresh majority felt that PiS was doing what they were doing, but in the name of political peace, we forget what happened before 2023, it would be a profoundly demoralizing signal for the full Polish political system. Politicians of all options would take him as a sign that “hell is not there”, and while in power, you can do anything – if only after her failure there are adequate votes to present the actions of the judiciary as “attack on democracy” or “representation of millions of Poles”.
Of course, accounts shouldn't look like political revenge. Therefore, it is not peculiarly fortunate that alternatively of leaving the substance to the prosecution and another authorities empowered to do so, leading politicians of the government's majority, with Prime Minister Tuski, are constantly speaking about the settlement of predecessors. Penalties should besides be proportionate. Therefore, before PKW it is very hard to decide to punish the Law and Justice. The argument "should we receive the main opposition party's primary tool of action, which is money", although it cannot service as a licence for impunity, is not entirely irrelevant and should be included in the decision on the future of the PiS subsidy. The punishment for the way she campaigned should be truly severe, but most likely not deadly.
It takes 2 to depolate.
The argument "PiS has crossed over, but now for the sake of the state, the another side must go back and impose restrictions" returns not only on the occasion of the PKW decision. It besides appears in discussions on the crisis of justice – it may besides be liable for chaos, but in order to avoid legal dualism, let us recognise neo-judges or do a "constitutional reset", a "legalising" part of the destructive actions of the Law and Justice – a government relation of the majority with the president, the public media and on the occasion of many another issues that present divided Poland politically.
The problem with these arguments is that the full work for depolarization of the Polish political dispute and its return into a minimally civilized framework is transferred to the non-written side. On the another hand, it is highly likely that what gestures against the Law and Justice would not be made by the present majority, as it would not effort to treat the United Right's environment as a constructive opposition in good faith, would not change much at the temperature of political dispute. It takes 2 to depolate, and PiS has at least since Smolensk's time based its identity on the demonization and delegation of political opponents, especially Donald Tusk and his party.
Like most modern anti-liberal populists, the PiS is seen as an almost organic sovereign emanation and the only legitimate representation of the Nation. Therefore, he sees all another political actors as usurpers, who, even if thanks to media advantage and abroad support, gained the majority in the Sejm temporarily, do not truly represent Poles. As long as the main force of the opposition thus perceives political reality, it is not possible to reconstruct a average democratic dispute. 1 where political actors – arguing very powerfully on various issues – at the same time recognise the right of competitors to fight for their own values and interests in politics without demonizing and deligitizing each other.
Especially as the Law and Justice, while exercising power, tried to change the Polish political system, like Hungary's Orbán, so as to guarantee a long-term advantage and radically limit the ability of the opposition and that part of society, which for various reasons rejected the regulation of the Law and Justice. This failed due to interior divisions in parties, civilian society opposition and groups specified as judges, global pressures and many another factors. The fresh majority, however, in establishing relations with the PiS, cannot abstrate from the fact that Kaczyński was trying to replace liberal democracy with a new, hybrid, authoritarian-popular systemic form.
The dissolution of the Law and Justice itself will not cure our democracy
In this situation, the script of the dissolution of the Law and extremist shuffling to the right of the Polish People's Republic – as any of the commentators are divining due to the financial problems of Nowogrodzka – could not be as much a problem for Polish democracy as a chance to heal it. Democracy requires a strong opposition, capable of controlling power and replacing it with government. However, even in the most caring country, it is sometimes better for a peculiarly inefficient company to declare bankruptcy than to absorb further rescue measures, and sometimes it is better for a dysfunctional organization to fall down and something fresh to replace it. Conservative or social PiS voters surely deserve better representation than the Kaczyński organization in its current form is able to supply them.
At the same time, it is not to be expected that the crisis of the Law and Justice – if it actually leads to implosion, alternatively than a combination of ranks – will automatically heal Polish democracy. The fresh hand on the right hand can be even worse than the present one. The dominant function can be played by formations not only as populist-authoritarian or homophobic PiS, but besides powerfully anti-Ukrainian, fundamentalist free market, taking a negative stance on issues specified as covid or Global warming. The PiS and its destructive anti-liberal offensives were a symptom of deep crises affecting all European democracies – and even extremist weakening of the PiS will not change the emotions that sooner or later will find themselves as embarrassing political representation as Kaczyński with Czarnek and Błaszczak.
So, while in no case should Polish democracy succumb to the blackmails of an annoying cousin from the Law and Justice and although as long as the Law and Justice will proceed in its present form, it is improbable that the depolarization and civilization of the Polish dispute should be expected, erstwhile planning the future, it must be borne in head that although with the Law and Justice as the main organization of opposition we are in a hopeless situation, without the Law and Justice could be even worse.
