“Tusk sent here to destroy Polish state” and bring it under foreign control, says Kaczyński

Opposition leader Jarosław Kaczyński has accused Prime Minister Donald Tusk of being sent from abroad on a mission to “liquidate the Polish state” and turn Poland into “an area inhabited by Poles but managed from outside”. He called on his supporters to “take various types of action…in defence of Poland”.

Kaczyński was addressing the crowd today at a rally organised in defence of Michał Olszewski, a priest currently being held in pre-trial detention as part of an investigation into the alleged corrupt use of state funds under the PiS government. Olszewski claims to have been tortured. The prison service denies this.

“What is happening in Poland is terrible,” said Kaczyński, who thanked the thousands-strong crowd for coming “to protest against lawlessness and, above all, against what is the most criminal and scandalous, that is, against torture”.

Kaczyński said that Olszewski’s treatment is just one example of “constant violation of the law” by Tusk’s government, which replaced Kaczyński’s national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party in power in December.

“These are not acts of madness,” he added, but “part of a well-planned action…to pacify our society because, after all, the plan which Tusk was sent here to implement is a plan, the finale of which is to be, in fact, the liquidation of the Polish state.”

“Not in the sense that Poland will disappear from the map, that someone will partition it, that there will be no Polish state bodies, parliament, government, or local authorities,” Kaczyński clarified. “Only that all important decisions will be made outside, we will be an area inhabited by Poles but managed from outside.”

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As examples of steps Tusk’s government has taken to implement that alleged plan, Kaczyński noted how it had first seized control of public media in order “to prevent millions of Poles from having access to true information” and then removed the national prosecutor.

Kaczyński said that, while he was encouraged by the turnout at today’s event, “demonstrations, even very large ones, do not change the situation”. Warsaw city hall, which is controlled by Tusk’s Civic Platform (PO), estimated the number of participants at around 4,500.

“What is happening today is a pacification operation and we must put an end to it with various types of actions,” Kaczyński declared. “We must act against what is happening in the name of defending Poland, democracy, the rule of law and ordinary human decency. We must unite.”

“Remember that, if the government is capable of torture, it is capable of rigging elections,” continued Kaczyński, who did not specify what kinds of actions he wanted to be taken.

Since losing power last year, Kaczyński and PiS have regularly accused Tusk’s government of violating the rule of law and of acting in foreign interests, especially Germany’s. In January, he likened Tusk to Hitler and accused him of wanting to turn Poles into “farmhands for Germany”.

Some legal experts have also questioned the validity of some of the actions of Tusk’s government, including its takeover of public media, elements of which have also been rejected by courts.

Observers have also noted that, since the takeover, public media have gone from producing PiS propaganda to now showing a strong bias towards Tusk’s government, in violation of their statutory obligation to be neutral.

PiS itself, during its time in power, was found to have violated the law by a number of Polish and European court rulings. Its eight-year rule also saw Poland fall dramatically in international rankings of democracy, media freedom and the rule of law.

When Tusk took office, his coalition pledged to restore democracy and the rule of law in Poland. The European Union has praised his government for doing so.

As a result, Brussels has this year ended its rule-of-law proceedings against Poland and unlocked billions of euros of funds frozen under the PiS government due to rule-of-law concerns.

Main image credit: PiS/X

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.