Opposition want Tusk held “criminally responsible” for failings in lead up to Polish floods

The opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party has called for Prime Minister Donald Tusk to be held “criminally responsible” for failings relating to recent floods that have devasted the southwest of the country. They claim he “misinformed” citizens by downplaying the scale of the threat.

Tusk has rejected such claims, accusing PiS of manipulating a statement he made just before the floods. He has also condemned one of the leaders of Confederation (Konfederacja), another opposition party, for suggesting that the authorities are hiding the true number of deaths caused by the disaster.

PiS’s criticism has focused on remarks Tusk made on Friday 13 September, when he said that “the forecasts are not overly alarming” and that “there is no reason to panic”. Over the subsequent weekend, devastating floods began that are known to have taken at least seven lives.

The opposition argues that Tusk made his remarks despite having ample evidence from various sources, including warnings from the European Union, that an extreme weather event was imminent.

“Donald Tusk said at a press conference: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the forecasts are not alarming, do not panic’,” said PiS spokesman Rafał Bochenek at a press conference on Thursday this week. “Reassuring, misinforming and de facto deceiving citizens about the scale of the threat.”

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Speaking alongside Bochenek, PiS MP Przemysław Czarnek told Tusk that “you have reason to panic because the legal and criminal responsibility rests on you”.

The previous day, during a special parliamentary session called to discuss the floods, Czarnek had likewise told Tusk that he “will be held legally and criminally responsible” for “negligence unprecedented in decades”.

“You caused catastrophic losses because you lied that there was no need to evacuate, because there was no reason to panic,” said Czarnek, quoted by news website Onet.

On Thursday, PiS published a video in which they recalled Tusk’s reassuring statements and accused him of failing to warn residents of Stronie Śląskie, Kłodzko and Nysa – some of the towns hit hardest by the floods – of the impending disaster.

Tusk, however, has rejected the opposition’s allegations, calling on them to “stop manipulating”. He said that his remarks regarding forecasts on the morning of Friday 13 September were accurate at the time.

But he also noted that he had made clear to people that, “whatever the forecast is, we do not underestimate the danger”.

“From day one, we told all residents – and repeated it every day many times – ‘do not underestimate the recommendations of the fire department and police about the need to evacuate’,” added Tusk.

Meanwhile, one of the leaders of the far-right Confederation party also criticised the government’s handling of the crisis.

“In our country, preparations for evacuation were not made until the last moment,” Krzysztof Bosak told broadcaster RMF FM on Thursday. “In the Czech Republic, Italy and Austria, the [crisis] management looked completely different.”

He criticised Tusk for failing to “name those to blame for the lack of preparation…for the fact that local communities and local government officials were taken completely by surprise by the impending flood wave”.

Bosak also claimed that the government was underreporting the number of victims. He noted that Austria and Poland have the same number of officially reported victims, seven.

“I do not believe that the same number of people died in Poland, because the extent of the flooding was much greater,” said Bosak, who cited claims that flood victims who died in cars had been classified as road deaths.

Those claims were dismissed by the national commander of the police, Marek Boroń, who told broadcaster Polsat that “we will not comment on political speculation and what we have warned against from the very beginning, which is disinformation”. Tusk called Bosak’s remarks “exceptionally disgusting”.

This week, the government appealed to Poles, including politicians, not to fall for and to spread disinformation regarding the floods. They claimed that evidence indicates Russian-linked accounts have been propagating false claims online.

Main image credit: KPRM/Flickr (under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.