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WARSAW — Polish President Andrzej Duda vowed Wednesday morning that he “won’t rest” until former Home Affairs Minister Mariusz Kamiński and his deputy Maciej Wąsik are released from custody, following the pair’s arrest late Tuesday as they were hiding out in the presidential palace.
However, Duda did not say if he would pardon the two. He has insisted in the past that a pardon he issued in 2015 is valid, although courts have found it was flawed as it was issued before the pair were convicted in an abuse-of-power trial. If he pardons them again, it would be an admission that his first amnesty was ineffective. They were tried again, convicted and sentenced to two years in prison in December. They rejected the verdicts, but were taken into custody on a court order.
“I won’t rest until Minister Mariusz Kamiński and his colleagues are free people again, as they should be, until they are released from prison,” Duda said, adding that he was “deeply shaken” by their “brutal” arrest.
According to Duda and the rest of the former Law and Justice (PiS) government camp, Kamiński and Wąsik were arrested illegally and both are still legitimate members of parliament, rejecting a decision by the speaker of parliament — buttressed by a Supreme Court verdict issued Wednesday — that they lost the right to sit as MPs after being convicted of a crime.
A different chamber of the Supreme Court, whose legitimacy is contested by European courts, issued a contrary ruling days ago, finding that Speaker Szymon Hołownia was incorrect in extinguishing their parliamentary mandates.
The arrests have polarized an already deeply divided country.
While backers of the current coalition government say that the imprisonment of Kamiński and Wąsik is a victory for the restoration of the rule of law after eight years of PiS governments, PiS loyalists, including party leader Jarosław Kaczyński, rallied outside the Warsaw prison where they were being held.
Kaczyński called them Poland’s first political prisoners since the end of communist rule in 1989, saying, “this is very sad and extremely scandalous, because these are people who were convicted of crimes they did not commit.”
The party plans a mass protest on Thursday.
Kamiński pledged on Wednesday that he would go on a hunger strike.
“I declare that I treat my conviction for fighting corruption and taking the unlawful action of depriving me of my parliamentary seat as an act of political revenge. Therefore, as a political prisoner, from the first day of my imprisonment, I will start a hunger strike,” he said in a statement.
“Of course, everyone has the right not to eat or drink. This is an individual decision,” Deputy Justice Minister Maria Ejchart told reporters, adding that everyone held in custody is under the care of doctors.
The arrest and its aftermath are part of a broader power struggle in Poland after the October 15 election that saw PiS lose its parliamentary majority to a coalition of four parties led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
Tusk, who pledged to “restore rule of law” once in power, has made a series of swift moves to cut off PiS from institutions it still controls like the public media.
Those steps have been criticized for bending or even breaking the law — a finding that was supported when a Warsaw court on Wednesday denied registering new supervisory and management boards for TVP, the state-owned broadcaster. However, a later decision by the government to put the broadcaster into liquidation and appoint new management is still in force.
