Polish President Andrzej Duda asked the Sejm (Lower House of Parliament) to appear on the first anniversary of the elections that changed the country’s political course, on October 15, 2023, and put an end to eight years of ultra-conservative Law Government and Justice (PiS). This Wednesday’s intervention, lasting almost 50 minutes, was an excellent summary of a year of clashes and trips between the head of state, from PiS, and the Government led by the liberal conservative Donald Tusk. Duda used expressions such as “shame!”, and accused the Executive of “hypocrisy” and undertaking a “witch hunt.” His words generated applause among the national-populist deputies and silence or laughter among the liberals.
Political scientist Anna Paczesniak, from the University of Wrocław, was prepared for an angry speech, but the president exceeded the worst expectations. Paczesniak believes the tone was “too aggressive, even for PiS voters.” But, above all, it seemed “dangerous” that the head of state questioned “the legality of what the Government and the Ministry of Justice do” and sowed “distrust in the State by attacking institutions.”
This year, Duda has lost the image of neutrality that is assumed of a head of state in Poland. “It gives the impression that the speech was not written only in the presidential palace, but at the headquarters of PiS,” says the political scientist, who emphasizes that although the president is no longer a formal member of the party, he continues to act as such. Since the end of the communist regime, in 1989, there is no precedent for such violent cohabitation between the Head of State and the Government, he assures.
There are examples of difficult cohabitation between different parties. Between 2007 and 2010, Tusk had Lech Kaczynski, the twin brother – who died in a plane crash – of the PiS leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, as president, and their coexistence was not easy, but it is not remembered as being as problematic as this. As Wojciech Przybylski, a political analyst at the think tank Visegrad Insight, cohabitation “aims to stabilize and foster collaboration for cohesion”. “Currently, disagreement has a political function as a bargaining chip, and ultimately, they never agree on anything,” he points out in a video conference.
The powers of the president in Poland are limited. It has more power than in Germany, but it is not comparable to that of France. It performs representative functions in foreign policy and has powers in the appointment of judges, ambassadors and other senior officials. But above all, it has the last word in the legislative process: it can veto laws or send them to the Constitutional Court. Duda has exercised all his prerogatives with relish.
Tusk came to power promising to return the country to the center of Europe and restore democracy and the battered rule of law. To begin with, it was proposed to carry out a deep cleaning of the public institutions and companies controlled by PiS, such as the public media, the Prosecutor’s Office, the courts or the secret services. The first weeks the clash between the liberals and the ultra-conservatives was absolute. In addition to Duda, the Constitutional Court, loyal to PiS, the National Council of the Judiciary (the governing body of judges) and some chambers of the Supreme Court worked at full speed against the reformist attempts of the new Executive.
Constitutional crisis
The country was on the verge of a constitutional crisis. Unusual scenes occurred, such as the squatting of the public media headquarters by PiS deputies, including the party president, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, or the refusal of the national prosecutor, the number two in the Prosecutor’s Office, to leave his position. In those first turbulent weeks, Duda sheltered two PiS deputies who had an arrest warrant against them, who were finally arrested when the president was outside the palace. After a tug of war with the Executive after their entry into prison, the head of State pardoned them.
The ultra-conservative president has vetoed laws such as the one that facilitated access to the morning-after pill, the one that recognized linguistic rights for the regional minority of Silesia or the one that sought to deactivate the commission of inquiry against Russian influence launched at the end of the previous legislature. Faced with the blockade, the Government frequently resorts to the use of executive or administrative decisions. Jacek Kucharczyk, president of the Institute of Public Affairs, explains that “ironically, these types of measures were introduced by the previous Executive to have the ability to govern without parliamentary restrictions.” In his speech this Wednesday, Duda denounced this way of governing as “a legal and systemic heresy and a violation of the Constitution.”
In his review of the 10 months of the Liberal Government -except for the Defense policy, which he praised-, the president criticized all the actions of the Executive, from the lack of investments in large infrastructures, to the attempts at reform in the judicial field. or immigration policy.
The thorniest area and where the most clashes have occurred in the last year is that of the rule of law. Some creative solutions by the Government to circumvent the president’s vetoes, which have sometimes bordered on illegality or have openly violated the law, were censored by civil society organizations specialized in this field. Jakub Jaraczewski, research coordinator at the Democracy Reporting International think tank, remains critical, but believes that “sometimes the ends justify the means” and recalls that this has not been a normal transfer of power “with cooperation for the good of the country”.
Jaraczewski, a legal expert, celebrates the steps that the Government has taken with the parliamentary approval of a law to reform the Constitutional Court and the judiciary. Duda sent them, however, to the Constitutional Court, which is the equivalent of shelving them. This Wednesday, the president accused the Executive of “wanting to subdue” the more than 3,500 judges whose appointments he has ratified—those pejoratively known as neojudges—, and “destroy their independence forever.” He also called the Government’s actions to purge the responsibilities of the previous rulers a “witch hunt”, which according to him only served “to satisfy the lowest instincts” and to “perpetuate divisions.”
The constant tension between the two branches of the executive branch is displayed in heated public exchanges. Last week, Tusk, Duda and the Foreign Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, got into a fight on the social network X at the expense of the appointment of fifty ambassadors proposed by the Government that the president refuses to sign. Analyst Przybylski points out that the game is to project an image among his voters as a tough guy who is not intimidated by whoever is in front of him.
A year after the elections, sociologist Kucharczyk considers that the atmosphere is one of low-level constitutional crisis. In addition to the clash with Duda, the Government and Parliament do not recognize the rulings of the Constitutional Court and some chambers of the Supreme Court. But “this chaos is not an immediate challenge to stability,” he says. Tusk insists that they will fix everything when there is a like-minded president and they have the ability to legislate.
The presidential elections are held in May 2025 and the Government trusts the fulfillment of all its promises to win them. It’s not done. Przybylski points out that he has a 55% chance of his candidate winning. Ultraconservatives and liberals, experts say, will redouble the clashes and stoke emotions to mobilize their own. Duda’s speech, which cannot be presented to repeat his mandate, but to which political aspirations are attributed in PiS, is already part of a pre-campaign that will deepen the polarization of society. “I thank the president for clearly raising awareness among everyone in Poland of the importance of the upcoming presidential elections. He left no doubts,” Tusk sarcastically replied in the gallery.