The Polish state is on the verge of a major legal and political crisis, as Prime Minister Donald Tusk seems to be shedding his skin. Since the beginning of his second term as Polish Prime Minister, Tusk has unveiled policies that are taking both his allies and political rivals by surprise.
During his 2007 tenure, analysts of Polish politics have described Tusk’s relationship with Law and Justice (PiS) as “politics of love.” PiS happens to be a populist group that Tusk defeated in the last elections.
So, Tusk was lenient with PiS during his first tenure and tolerated their ideologies. However, his second term does not look like it would be business as usual. In a recent statement by a Polish public affairs expert, Jacek Kucharczyk, Tusk permitted too many excesses of the PiS during his first tenure and seemed to regret it.
Tusk is going all in, and at full throttle, to establish democratic ideals in Poland and eliminate the dominance of communist ideas. For example, he has disconnected TVP, Poland’s public TV station, and a platform for propagating ideologies peculiar to the previous government. Likewise, the arrest of two PiS ex-ministers at the Presidential Palace was recently in the news.
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These sudden changes in the Prime Minister’s political temperature were too much for many PiS members and loyalists of the previous government to bear. So much so that pockets of protests are erupting around Poland.
For loyalists who agree with Tusk’s democratic ideals, it is like a sweet revenge after eight years of authoritarian rule under PiS. However, these same loyalists think he is going too fast. Stanley Bill, a Cambridge Polish Studies professor, has echoed those opinions. He said, “There’s a sense of justice being seen to be done… (however) It’s been done in a hurry.”
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So far, all the jabs by Tusk are for a common and obvious goal: restore the independence of the Polish judiciary and state-controlled media. Tusk probably realizes that the effort would be difficult but decides to take the plunge. Standing by was no longer an option.
During the past eight years of PiS rule, their authoritarian reforms were rigged with legislative bottlenecks. For example, the Polish entities that oversee changing the reforms constitutionally have PiS loyalists at their helm of affairs. Polish President Andrzej Duda is a loyalist of the infamous PiS. So, Duda alone is enough to block all anti-PiS legislation.
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However, Tusk made his intentions known in the first few days of his reelection as Prime Minister. First, he dismissed the directors at TVP and replaced them with individuals without any PiS agenda. Tusk intended to stop the spread of embarrassing propaganda through public-funded media outlets immediately.
PiS loyalists first initiated a sit-in protest as a pushback, and President Duda defunded the TV station. Since then, the station has been comatose and was even off-air through the Christmas holidays. However, it has relieved Polish people that the propaganda media tap has been stopped. Even some moderate PiS members agree with Tusk on that decision.
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