Polish opposition launches website for reporting law-breaking by government

Aug 10, 2024 | Law, Politics

Poland’s opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party has launched a website allowing people to anonymously report cases of the government violating the law.

Its announcement came a day after Prime Minister Donald Tusk revealed that his government has so far identified 100 billion zloty of suspected illegal state spending when PiS was in power and that charges have been brought against over 60 PiS-era officials.

At a press conference today, PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński accused Tusk of being a “brazen liar” who uses “false propaganda” to appeal “to the lumpenproletariat”. He declared that “all of PiS’s actions were legal”.

Speaking alongside Kaczyński, PiS deputy leader Mariusz Błaszczak argued that it is, in fact, the current government that has repeatedly “violated the constitution, violated the law”. As examples, he pointed to the takeover of public media and the national prosecutor’s office.

In a separate interview today for the Polish Press Agency (PAP), Kaczyński also condemned the government’s attempts to reform the judiciary, including removing judges appointed under PiS. “We are returning to a third-world system,” he warned.

However, Błaszczak also admitted that many of their group’s supporters say “PiS has not been effective in holding Tusk’s government to account”. That is why they have decided to “set up a website, where you can submit reports – including anonymously – with examples of Tusk’s [abuses]”.

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The name of the website is “Stop Patowładzy”, with the latter word being a combination of władza, meaning government or authorities, and the prefix pato-, which is short for “pathological” and is often used in Polish to describe something corrupt or which deviates from social norms.

Visitors to the page see a message telling them that they can “help fight for the Poland of our dreams” by “reporting abuses of power”.

PiS says all submitted reports “will be reviewed by our team” and, where potential abuses are verified, “we will take appropriate action to refer the case to the competent authorities and present it to the public”.

At today’s conference it was also revealed that 15 notifications of alleged crimes by the current authorities have already been submitted to prosecutors with three more planned in the coming days.

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 those of Germany. In January, he likened Tusk to Hitler and last month accused him of being “sent here to destroy the Polish state”.

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/YouTube (screenshot)

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